I love the concept of Escape Rooms and Breakout EDU challenges!

I think escape rooms and breakout EDU challenges are great ways to encourage teamwork, build a strong and positive classroom culture, and engage students with challenging ideas in a low-stress (but high-fun!) way. Over the last year, I’ve created my own version of a hybrid-Escape/Breakout Challenge that is very easy to transfer into your own classroom for any content!

For materials, all you need are 3 locks, 3 boxes, scissors, 2 sandwich bags, tape, and some sort of prize. Any extra materials (books, calculators, phones, laptops, objects, etc) are up to you! My students typically need their phones, because I like using QR codes.

Students working to find clues to a puzzle.

To Get Started

The first step is to break your class into two groups. I did this activity on the very first day as a way for students to dive into my syllabus, learn what texts we would be covering this year, explore the classroom space, and meet each other. If you don’t know how your students work in a collaborative setting, this is a great way to find out!

The First 4 Challenges

The first four challenges relate directly to your content, and should be unique for each team. If you are a literature teacher, maybe the page numbers of each clue are the numbers to your lock. If you are a math or science teacher, the answers to the problems can reveal the answer. Or, you can give students multiple choices for answers and correlate each answer to a clue for your lock combo.

The Last 3 Challenges

The last three challenges are the same for each team, and they should be racing to the finish line! For the first challenge, I usually do some sort of group activity (ex. When you have listed every member of the Montague family, submit this paper to Ms. Hall for your next challenge).

The second to last challenge is a jigsaw puzzle – choose an image related to the challenge, and cut it up into random shapes for students to tape together. On the back is the last challenge, which should give both teams the combination to the final lock. I’ve used the first lines of Shakespearean sonnets, different ciphers, a Twitter challenge… be creative!

Create Your Own Challenge!

Click HERE for a template you can use to create your own Challenge! Then, click HERE for an example that I used in a workshop to show teachers in my school how they could create a Challenge for their classes. I focused on Student Engagement, and utilized several blog posts from the Teach Better community as well as the fantastic Dave Burgess text Teach Like A Pirate.

Please reach out with questions, and I’d love to hear how your Breakout Challenge goes!

About Erin Hall

Erin Hall is an English Teacher at Chariho Regional High School and the Founder & CEO of the Young Educators Society of Rhode Island. YESRI is an organization where educational professionals with less than 10 years of experience can connect, collaborate, and learn from each other.

Erin’s Classroom Website: www.mshallclassroom.com.

For more on YESRI, visit: www.yesri.org

Or visit them on Facebook at facebook.com/yesriorg.