Today was my first ever attempt at an 8th grade version of MysteryQuest – HistoryQuest8: 1754-1898. An 8th grade historyquest has been on my “wish list” for a few years now.

Timing
We made it an hour and thirty minutes to try to meet middle school schedules better. An hour would be even better for that goal. Still enough classes were able to work it out that we had 4 schools interacting.

We were able to do all the clues in 30 minutes, and only after one extra creative presentation did the students need clues repeated.

Difficulty
Amazingly, these 8th graders seriously challenged each other! I was worried about the clues being too easy, since Google has made researching much easier. One class gave a latitude and longitude so everyone got that. But the other 3 classes clues were so hard that not everyone figured it out. We used 20 min to research, then another 5 minutes, then clarifying questions, then another 10 minutes to research.

Creativity
8th graders certainly weren’t old and boring with their presentations! We had singing clues, math problems, two trombones, rebus clues, clues with visuals only, and skits. One class sang the reveal of their clue, which all the other classes really enjoyed.

All in all, I think it went well. I would like to crunch it to an hour to make it easier for 8th grade to participate. I’m also thinking of narrowing it to just the Civil War. Any thoughts or comments?