Breakout Of Your Box With Breakout EDU!
Breakout of your box with Breakout EDU! Do you feel that you need to break out of your box? Do you have an unruly or just busy class? Do your students need to work on team building and social skills? Well, break out of your box with Breakout EDU! Breakout EDU creates ultra-engaging learning games for people of all ages. Games (Breakouts) teach teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, and troubleshooting by presenting participants with challenges that ignite their natural drive to problem-solve.
To “break out” of the box students need to work together to solve a series of puzzles in order to open each lock. Breakout EDU brings the Escape Room to the classroom. Escape rooms have been popping up all over the country. Escape rooms are where people are willingly locked into a room. Groups are given a predetermined set of time to break out using a series of hidden clues. Sometimes groups run into red herrings. The main concept of Breakout EDUs and Escape rooms is that groups need to work together to break out. Rather than breaking out of a room, students are asked to break out of a box.
Social Skills & Employability Skills:
These are GREAT to use with Employability Skills and to build social skills for students of all ages. There are games appropriate for students K-12 and beyond. I have used Breakout EDU with Kindergarteners, 9th graders and adults. The Gingerbread Man Is Loose In Our School that goes along with the book with the same title was great before the holidays with Kindergarteners. The Kindergartener’s job was to work together to break the gingerbread man out of the box.
Before Christmas break, I used Reindeer Games with a 5th-grade class that needed to work on social skills. Their goal was to work together to break the reindeer out of the box by solving reindeer games. I have also used Unlocking Shakespeare with a 9th grade English class as a way to assess Employability Skills to end the Shakespeare unit. There are literally hundreds of breakout both with the tangible box and locks and online breakouts. To get started with your Breakout use this link. Breakout EDU boxes are $89 and come with all locks you will need. They will also come with a password to access all breakout games.
Purchase extra materials here.
Introduce New Concepts:
Breakout EDU’s are great tools that can be used to introduce new lessons or reinforce a new skill. It is also great to use at the end of a unit to bring closure or to reinforce skills.
Skills Used With Breakout EDU:
All Breakout EDU games teach critical thinking, teamwork, complex problem solving, and can be used in all content areas. The breakout box immediately sparks curiosity and forces students and teachers alike to think outside of the box. Talk about motivation!!!! Breakouts are great to use to teach and assess communication skills along with speaking and listening standards (especially with little ones). As mentioned above, they also work great in teaching and assessing Employability skills. Breakout EDU’s provide opportunities for students to grow as leaders. Often it is the least likely student in the class that will show their natural leadership skills. An interracial part of conducting Breakouts in your classroom is the debriefing process. Students need the opportunity to reflect on the process and evaluate their own thinking. They need the chance to break out of their own box to expand their learning.
Resources
Check out the Breakout EDU website for tons of free game ideas and directions. Unfortunately, in order to access most of these activities, you will need to purchase a site membership.
I also love to use the EzPz Science Escape Room activities from Teachers Pay Teachers. They are super simple to use and literally a print and go resource not to mention very fairly priced. I would suggest purchasing the box and lock materials off of Amazon and using the free materials from the breakout site or you can find tons of ideas on TPT.
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