When most people hear the term “escape room”, they picture elaborate puzzles, locked rooms, hidden keys, and a ticking timer. Modern escape rooms have developed a reputation for being a ton of fun and great opportunities for teamwork. However, setting one up involves countless hours of prep work beforehand, both physically setting up the space and mentally planning it all out with perfect precision.
If this is your idea of an escape room, you may feel confused when other teachers talk about using an escape room in their classrooms. Maybe you think, “Who’s got time for that?!” Not me!
Luckily, there is a happy medium. Academic escape rooms can bring all of the fun of an escape room without the hours of preparation and setup! In fact, math escape rooms are one of my favorite quick activities to leave for a sub! You heard that right – they really are easy to use!
I’ve been sold since my 3rd year of teaching when I first started using academic escape rooms. One of my classes (full of 7th-grade boys) had too much energy. It was right before Halloween, and I was trying to teach them about fractions. They weren’t really having it. I mean, how could I compete with talking about their plans, costumes, and dates? I needed something that would harness their energy – and my first escape room was born! These boys LOVED it! My classroom was transformed from a hectic mess to a place where students were talking about fraction strategies and showing their work, racing to check their code words and talking a little bit of smack to each other as they moved on. They begged me for more activities like it and I was hooked!
But what are they, really?
Academic escape rooms involve curriculum-based challenges that result in a code word or number when completed correctly. Students can work in teams or alone, racing against their classmates in order to correctly solve math problems and find each code word. In my favorite type of academic escape room, which I’ll refer to as a digital escape room throughout this post, students enter each code in a Google Form that serves as each “lock”, or check it with a teacher before moving on. Teachers can provide a reward for the winning team, to everyone as they finish, or not at all!
Academic escape rooms can take many forms, depending on your preference and available technology.
- 100% Paper & Pencil – If your school doesn’t have access to 1:1 technology, or your students just need a break from screens, print out the challenges you’d like your students to complete and the cover page. Students can show their work on the printed packet and turn it in when finished. Students can check in with an adult after each challenge, as a way to monitor student progress, or at the end, when all codes can be checked at once for a grade!
- 100% Digital – If your school does have access to technology, it can be a great asset for this kind of activity! Assign students the Google Form and Google Slides versions of the challenges. Students may need to show their work on scrap paper or whiteboards, but they can submit the form and worksheets digitally, meaning less time at the copier for you!
- 50/50 – Pick and choose what you want to be printed and what you want students to access digitally! My personal preference is to print the challenges for students and assign the Google Form to serve as a method for students to check their codes independently, leaving me available for student questions!
Students can solve engaging challenges and enter their codewords in the Google Form for a self-checking activity!
Academic escape rooms have so many benefits!
- Motivating and Fun – I’ve had students who hate math begging me to do more, just because they loved the thrill of competition or solving the puzzles.
- Promote math conversations between partners – These activities are perfect for student talk! They have to talk through how to solve problems and each of the code words, leading to productive conversations!
- Easy to check – It’s easy to tell if students have wrong answers because their codes are incorrect!
- Encourage attention to detail – Students need to get the correct answers in order to figure out the code, but they also have to carefully read the directions to understand how!
- Low prep – If you purchase a ready-made academic escape room from TPT, you really just have to print or assign and go!
- Customizable – It’s easy to mix and match the printed challenge pages before heading to the copier, meaning you can combine escape room challenges from a lot of different resources, or even create some of your own! Additionally, with a basic understanding of Google Forms, you can create your own “locks” for your unique combination! P.S. If you purchase one of my ready-to-go escape room resources, you’ll get detailed directions on how to do this!
- Flexible – You can also use escape room worksheets in many ways, making them a super flexible resource in any classroom! They are perfect to refresh prerequisite skills before starting a new topic, as a fun review before a unit assessment, as a review after a school break, or as a unique, easy-to-grade homework assignment!
If you’re ready to try an escape room in your math class this school year, I have over 15 of them that were created with busy teachers like you in mind – ready to assign, with minimal prep work, clear directions, and tons of options for customization! Check them out here!
Have you tried an escape room in your math classroom? I can’t wait to hear about it in the comments below!
