Escape rooms are my new classroom obsession!
5 Reasons I Love Digital Escape Rooms:
They boost student engagement instantly
Little to no-prep is involved in setting these activities up
These games promote team building in the classroom
You can use these games for virtual learning, in-person learning, hybrid learning, home-schooling, and tutoring
Students enjoy doing math ♡♡♡♡!!!!
Lets take a look at how these games work in the classroom. All the images below are pulled from my Zombie Attack Escape Room for grade 4.
Step One: Set the Stage
Get kids invested in the game by setting the stage and placing them in the story:
Step Two: Throw in Some Learning
At this point the kids are invested and in-it-to-win-it! So throw in a little math and I doubt you’ll meet with much protest. You can boost the excitement even more by setting a timer and telling the students they have X number of minutes to complete the activity and escape the Zombies (or whatever else they are attempting to escape from).
Step Three: Ensure Success
There is nothing more defeating than getting something wrong and not being able to try again. These games allow students as many chances as needed to get to the right answer. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again and all that. It works. If kids are excited about a math activity and they want to play and win the game, they’ll have no problem going back and looking for their mistakes. #learning
Step Four: Leave them Wanting More
There are a couple of ways to accomplish this last step. You can leave them with a little bit of a cliff hanger like in this Zombie Attack game or you can tell them they did such a great job with this activity that there will be another! I would be very surprised if they didn’t ask the next day when their next escape room activity will be ☺.
Have you tried an escape room in the classroom? I’m interested to hear about your experience with it!