Prior to this year, I had been to a few escape rooms and done virtual versions of Breakout EDU in high school, but had never before seen or heard of Breakout EDU. I completed a breakout during a Passport to Success event earlier in the semester, but the clues were different, so my prior experience didn’t help much. I am very intrigued by this concept and am excited to research more about it as I write this blog!
Initially, at the beginning of this gamification unit, I was slightly hesitant. In the past, I’ve associated games in classrooms as a fun Friday activity that is incorporated because students were being rewarded, or the teacher needed a break. So when Mrs. Davis said we would be completing a BreakoutEDU in class, I did not really it expect it to have much educational value… check out just how wrong I was:
In class when my group was trying to break out, we were truly collaborating and critically thinking. It was a really great way to apply the knowledge and concepts we’d discussed in class in a tangible activity. I also really appreciated that the activity was related to what we were learning and wasn’t just a random, fun activity. Although that would have been nice, it was great that we were able to apply and further learn about classroom management throughout this activity. Because the clues were rather vague, we had to thoroughly read all of the information provided and reflect on it accordingly in order to open the various locks. At one point, I vividly remember all of the groups slowly making their way to METRC and the excitement in the classroom was at an all-time high. We were all so close to the end and were subconsciously collaborating as an entire class. During the activity, I was really thankful that we had hint cards! However, we actually ended up saving ours until the very end when we were so close to finishing.
Breakout EDU is an immersive learning experience that challenges students to work together to discover clues and apply their knowledge to crack codes and ultimately breakout!
First, let’s talk about the Breakout EDU kit itself…
The kit costs $150, which is a daunting number to a future NC Public School teacher… so I looked into how to make your own kit…
Check out this blog post that shows you how to make your own!
As you can tell from the name, the objective is to break out of the box. However, in order to do so, students must complete a series of tasks that reveal clues that relate to the various locks. So what exactly are students getting out of this?
Breakout EDU in My Classroom:
Breakout EDU is definitely something I hope to incorporate in my future classroom. The possibilities are endless regarding what activities and what lessons I can relate it to. I know that Breakout EDU will help foster an environment that promotes collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving — all while my students laugh and strengthen relationships with their peers. Breakout EDU is a great way to incorporate the 4 C’s into the classroom: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. While the 4 C’s are not necessarily something I will specifically address in a lesson, it is a concept that should be an underlying theme within all lessons. I found this article on a teacher resource website that really emphasized the use of the 4 C’s within this activity — make sure to check it out!
I think that this activity may be a good activity to do at the beginning of the school year so that students can start to get to know each other, establish strong relationships, and recognize their individual strengths. I would then like to have students do the same task, with the same people, further into the year so that they could see how much they improved.
At first, I was struggling to come up with a creative way to connect Breakout EDU to a specific lesson or unit. However, I have finally come to the conclusion that making it an end of unit review activity would be really neat. The clues needed to unlock the locks would be prompted upon answering review questions and applying concepts learned. I think this would be a really neat and fun way for students to look forward to review sessions and really engage with questions and soak in concepts.
Check out this list below to see how Breakout EDU addresses Common Core standards:
Math Practices
- Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
- Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
- Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
- Model with mathematics.
- Use appropriate tools strategically.
- Attend to precision.
- Look for and make use of structure.
- Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
ELA Anchor Standards - Key Ideas and Details
- Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
- Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
- Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
I think this video below does an excellent job showcasing the potential Breakout EDU has to encourage collaboration and teamwork.
Here’s a picture of my group after we broke out!
Check out all these signs your students can hold up at the end!
