Escape Rooms – Teachers Love Them!

by | Sep 19, 2021 | Lessons

Bring this fun activity into your classroom!

Escape rooms are great fun!  And to bring this activity into the classroom makes learning truly enjoyable.  What better way to practice school lessons than with physical or digital escape rooms?  Students complete challenges individually or in groups in order to solve problems and ultimately “escape”.  Escape rooms incorporate problem-solving, team building, and enhance communication skills in students.  Some teachers introduce this problem-solving activity by creating  an actual locked box and display it in the classroom.  This decorated box covered in chains and locks, is used to hook students into the game.  What mysterious prize could be inside?

Set up an Escape Room 

The game can begin with a story that brings students into a desired theme.  Themes can center around certain holidays or subjects covered in the classroom.  A challenge is first introduced.  Are students escaping from a concentration camp during the Holocaust, or finding their way back to civilization while reading the novel “Hatchet”?   Are they solving math problems in order to escape from a haunted house for a Halloween-themed escape?   Science teachers can create hands-on discovery activities that move students toward an “escape” goal.   The possibilities are really endless.

How the Escape Room Works

Escape rooms can be used to introduce a new topic or review curriculum already taught. Students are often separated into groups that work together to solve a series of clues.  Different stations placed around the classroom give students choices in which tasks to tackle first, in order to unlock the mystery box.  As each task is mastered, students gradually learn the combination to the locked box.  (Find a cheap combination luggage lock that can be set with a 3 or 4 digit combination.)  The box can be full of prizes of the teacher’s choosing.  Student motivation can be enhanced by allowing the team that solves the clues first, to get first choice when choosing a prize from the box.

Digital Escape Rooms

Can escape rooms be used digitally?  Of course.  Students can enter different rooms on Google Slides and click on hyperlinks to take them to different challenges.   Teachers can link a Google Form into a slide, that requires students to solve a problem correctly before they are allowed to move on to the next challenge.  Digital Escape Rooms can be colorful and themed with all kinds of fun clipart.  Check out Amped Up Learning, a site with lesson plans by teacher authors similar to Teachers Pay Teachers.   Amped Up Learning has all kinds of escape room plans and ideas for teachers.  Some are complete and ready to use for teachers, and other are editable so the teacher can fill in their own questions based on the topic they are currently teaching.

If you’re looking for fresh, new ideas to keep your students engaged, consider creating your own escape room, or purchasing one by a creative teacher author.  Have fun teaching!  Your students will have fun learning!

And Halloween is coming!  Check out these two Halloween-themed digital escape rooms.

Algebra Escape Room

https://ampeduplearning.com/algebra-haunted-house-escape-algebraic-equations/

Editable Halloween Escape Room for any topic

https://ampeduplearning.com/halloween-escape-room-editable-for-any-topic/