How to Create a Digital Escape Room for Your Class Party

Teamwork makes the dream work.

An oldie but a goodie…

As teachers, we know that a huge part of our job is to teach our students life skills, such as teamwork, collaboration, compassion, perseverance, and so much more. In previous posts, I shared how to use picture books to teach these skills, as well as how to run a Community Circle.

Those ideas are absolutely perfect for Back to School season, but what about the rest of the year? In order to successfully teach these skills, they really need to be practiced throughout the school year, not just at the beginning of the school year.

My solution…digital escape rooms!!!

In this blog post, we will dive into the benefits of incorporating digital escape rooms into your Fun Fridays and class parties, as well as explore three steps to create your own resource.

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Why Digital Escape Rooms?

There are so many benefits to using digital escape rooms in your classroom. Trust me…once created, these are easy to implement, highly engaging, multi-purpose, and a real crowd pleaser. When my students walk in and see escape room written on our schedule, they get so excited!

To get more bang for your buck, I recommend teaching an SEL (social-emotional learning) mini-lesson beforehand. This is a great opportunity to tie in a read aloud, graphic organizer, and role play. After the lesson, I would suggest having some kind of incentive (i.e. points, awards, stickers, etc.) and awarding teams with them for demonstrating the skill from the mini-lesson. Here are some mini-lesson ideas that you can incorporate throughout the year:

• Teamwork: Every year, this is the mini-lesson I teach before our first escape room. We discuss what makes a successful team. This topic covers a wide range of subtopics, such as how to compromise, delegate, and create a safe, inclusive space. We review how everyone has different strengths to bring to the table, and how as a team, it is important to figure out how to best utilize those strengths.
• Collaboration: This mini-lesson is a great opportunity to discuss what collaboration is and more importantly, what it is not. I usually don’t emphasize the non-examples, but during this lesson, I do. In fact, I usually role play examples and non-examples and ask the students to identify the strengths and areas of growth for different scenarios. I have found that sometimes, students either solve the entire puzzle and simply give the answer to their teammates OR they wait for another student to solve the puzzles. Remember those group projects in school where you did all of the work? This lesson gives you the chance to address that.
• Grit: I love teaching AND practicing grit in my classroom! So often, students have the mindset that if they do not get the correct answer quickly and on the first try, they are either incapable or the problem is impossible. We absolutely need our students to be comfortable being uncomfortable. What I mean is that we need to teach them how to persevere through difficult situations in search of a solution. This is a life lesson that applies to both academics and social situations.
• Respect: Working in groups gives students the chance to practice communicating respectfully, which is such a difficult task (even for adults)! An important mini-lesson is how to respectfully disagree, which includes the ability to compromise. I typically teach this lesson by posing a scenario where two students have two very different ideas on how to solve a puzzle. I then ask the class to come up with a few different ways the students can come to ONE solution that would be both respectful and inclusive.
• Time Management: It is incredibly difficult for students to manage their time. During group projects, I typically teach students how to backwards plan. We identify the goal for the project, consider the allotted time for the project, and then break the tasks into chunks. Escape rooms are a bit different, but they still require time management. For escape rooms, I teach my class how to figure out how much time to allot to each puzzle. (This is a very rough estimate.) If they do not finish a puzzle within that time, they may wat to revisit their problem solving strategy. Perhaps they can try a new technique or look at it from a different perspective.

How to Create a Digital Escape Room

Step 1: Identify Your Goals and Choose a Theme

First thing’s first…choose a theme. This could be related to a specific subject or topic, such as your current science or social studies unit. Another option is to create an escape room based on a specific holiday. Since I typically use these escape rooms during class parties, I create them based on holidays throughout the year.

Check out our Haunted House Escape Room and

our Holidays Around the World Escape Room Bundle!

Digital escape rooms can either have academic or SEL goals. The first step requires you to identify what you hope your students get out of the activity. Do you want them to prepare for a math test? Look for patterns and decipher codes? Assess their knowledge on a specific standard? Simply practice teamwork and grit?

For my escape rooms, I usually focus on teamwork and problem solving. I also use them as part of our holiday class parties. Therefore, I incorporate a variety of logic puzzles with both language and number puzzles.

Step 2: Create the Puzzles

That brings us to the main event…the puzzles! No matter what your goal, I encourage you to use a variety of puzzles in your escape room. This allows students to have several opportunities to be successful. Each student should bring their unique strengths to the team. (Also, I would recommend keeping students; strengths in mind when grouping students.) My go-to puzzles are the following:

• Visual Puzzles: These puzzles can include visual patterns, hidden pictures, and spot-the-difference. Personally, I love to include some kind of puzzle using color (i.e. a certain color letter spells a secret word).
• Logic Puzzles: This is by far my favorite type of puzzle. Students are given a series of clues and have to infer the solution. The key is not to give away too much information. These puzzles should require the process of elimination and inferencing. (See below for an example. The image is from our Self-Correcting Back to School Escape Room.)
• Number Puzzles: This for all those math lovers out there! Sudoku and algebraic equations (even simple ones) are both great options! Include at least one puzzle where students have to solve basic math problems to find missing numbers. Perhaps you give the solution to two equations, one with multiplication and one with subtraction, and they have to find the missing numbers. Here is a basic example: A x B = 20 and AB – B = 40 The missing numbers are consecutive numbers. NOTE: If you are teaching elementary school, instead of using variables, just put empty boxes or blank spaces.
• Language Puzzles: This is where anagrams, crossword puzzles, and coded messages come into play here. I usually include more than one language puzzle in my escape rooms since there are so many options!

Step 3: Make a Self-Correcting Form

This is where you can make your life easier! I usually create the puzzles in Google Slides and then create a separate Google Form.

step by step

video

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I hope you are feeling more equipped to create your own escape rooms that are sure to challenge and engage your students.

The only con…they take quite a bit of time to prep! Having said that, if you are short on time, let me do the work for you! Browse our escape rooms here. You’ll thank me later!!!

Next month, we are going to continue to explore ways to make learning fun, but this time, we will dive into both math and ELA activities! You are not going to want to miss this. I cannot wait to share ideas for dice games, card games, and digital games you can use in all subject areas. Until next time…remember to keep learning!