EdTech Feature: Escape Room

Always on the hunt for different ways in which to engage your students? Tired of playing PowerPoint Jeopardy when reviewing for tests? Why not construct a fun and challenging experience for your students that mirrors a popular trend? Subscription mystery and escape room boxes are all the rage right now, as are in-person escape room experiences. You, too, can create a simple escape room experience for your classroom!

Here’s a quick cheat sheet as shared by one of our teachers at a recent “Tech Tip Tuesday” gathering:

Do you want to go all-out and actually make a box for students to unlock? Here’s a step-by-step guide. You don’t have to do this to create a successful escape room experience, however. In addition to the cheat sheet posted above, here’s another blog post that outlines how to make an escape room without boxes, locks, etc.

There are also pay versions out there, such as Breakout.edu - depending on your school’s resources, this might be a cool add-on to your existing learning management system.

Let’s say I was starting a unit on World War I and I want to begin by briefly introducing the overall causes of the war, sometimes abbreviated and taught as the acronym “MAIN” for Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism. Since this is a major objective for the unit, I want to lead with it in an engaging way. I could have my students discover each cause by completing an escape room-type task. For example, students could fill out a Sudoku grid whose solution is linked to code letters that spell out one of the causes. The same could be done with a Fibonacci sequence, logic puzzle, or the like. Students could be presented with a letter or other document from a famous World War I personality and have to use a code cipher on it to decode another cause of the war, etc. You can structure it any way you like, including the use of online research and tools that bring in a 21st century component. Students might be placed on competing teams, racing against the clock to discover all four causes of the war. No matter how you set it up, you’re creating an experience they won’t soon forget.

Have you tried something like this in your classroom? If so, what did you do and how did you do it? Did students enjoy the activity?