Escape Room Activities to engage & challenge

Over the years, I have become a great fun of escape room lessons when I want pupils to revise for several topics in order to help them remember and master the knowledge or skills previously learned.  There are many different ways to implement them for any topic, theoretical or practical.  If you are unfamiliar with this, escape rooms are a series of challenges, puzzels, etc, where learners use critical thinking and sometimes teamwork to “breakout” of a room.  It might seem a little overwhelming at first to set up, but once you’ve established a process, you can use the same procedures and equipment and simply change out the challenges/puzzles and story for new topics.  

There are 5 main reasons to use this motivational tool in lessons: 

• Team building
• Promote Critical Thinking
• Add interactivity in your lessons
• Keep pupils engaged while revising topics
• They work for any topic… or subject

  How to set up a escape room (There are many variations): 

1. Have a box on the teacher’s desk with a prize inside; safe with keypad lock or a box tied/chained with 4-5 padlocks. 
2. Have a timer and (virtual) keys for the safe/box mentioned above. 
3. Arrange your classroom desks in clusters or work stations, one per group, with the 5 challenges clearly labelled on each cluster. 
4. Set up the purpose and create a story (Eg; The evil teacher has trapped you and your team in a room. The only way out is to solve the 5 challenges to obtain the 5 keys and open the box with the main key to exit the room.) 
5. Create the 5 challenges of puzzles for each cluster or work station (Some might be on screen):
   • Convert or match up binary or hexadecimal numbers
   • Determine the output for a piece of pseudocode or code
   • Write code to solve a challenge Debug a piece of code
   • Create an algorithm to solve a problem
   • Match computer parts with terms
   • Define Internet components
   • Cipher puzzle
   • ASCII code into text puzzle
   • Get data from a database matching SQL code
   • Logic circuit with given inputs to work out outputs
   • Theory fill-in the gaps exercise
   • Etc 
6. Split class in groups of 2-3 pupils with a leader and a clipboard with answer sheet to record each correct answers for each challenge or puzzle and, every time they are successful, collect the (virtual) key from the teacher.  
7. Explain the task clearly to learners; they will have 30 minutes (Display timer on the board) to solve all challenges/puzzles, after which they get trapped in the room. Clarify that they need to record their answers on the sheet provided to show the teacher when all puzzles completed successfully so they can use the keys to open the teacher’s box, obtaining this way the master key to win and therefore ‘escape’ from the room and the ‘evil’ teacher. 

The activity might last for 40 minutes, after which, you can give pupils a mini assessment on the topics covered to gauge their progress and identify misconceptions. 

As I have already said , this is a brilliant way to engage students on previously covered topics and help them revise before a major assessment for example. My Key Stage 4 students love these lessons! 

Some useful links: 

• 7 common types of escape room puzzles: https://tinyurl.com/4jn2f5ry
   
• Computational Thinking puzzles: https://tinyurl.com/yc59ma66
   
• Escape rooms further reading: https://tinyurl.com/mved28ex