Breakout!

A few years ago I went to my first Escape Room with a group of friends.  We had one hour to figure out a series of puzzles in order to complete a "bank heist".  It was a ton of fun, and it really made us work as a team, think out of the box, and try various solutions in order to escape (which we didn't!).

Recently, the idea of an escape room has come to schools, typically in the form of a "breakout" project, either for the simple purpose of team building, or for the purpose of team building and problem solving related to a content area.  In either case, they are an engaging, fun addition to your class.

Here's an overview of how you can get started with breakouts.

Breakout Edu 

Probably the easiest way to get started with a breakouts in the classroom is Breakout Edu, a subscription based service.  Breakout.edu makes the task of creating a breakout activity for your class a little less hard. You still need to do the setup and legwork, but the subscription includes plenty of ready made clues and games for almost any curriculum area. And, when you buy the kit, it also comes with the various locks and tools that the student might need. In addition, on the site, there are community created breakouts that are free to anyone and digital breakouts that use the same concept, but the locks and clues are all "virtual". The site also provides many resources, including videos and tutorials that will help you and your students.

There are many more resources out there to get started, here are a few that I found the most useful. 

• Breakout Edu resources Hyperdoc- Provides resources for locks, videos, game searches, etc. 
• Breakout Edu Smore 
• Digital Breakout Tools

Create a Breakout Experience 

In order to "take it up a notch" teachers and students can also design their own game.  This would be a good second step after the students and teachers have had experience going through the process and seeing how the puzzles work.  

Here are a few resources for creating your own Breakout Edu

• Resources for creating your own breakout
• Design a Game
• Build your own

If you're looking for a new, fun way to review information or do some type of group/team building, definitely give classroom breakouts a shot!