You probably have a list a mile long of new things that you want to try this semester. Is BreakoutEDU on your list? Whether Santa brought you breakout box supplies or you are still waiting in queue for your official BreakoutEDU box to arrive…or whether you are just hearing about this for the first time…I have the perfect first BreakoutEDU activity for your students!!
One brave teacher in the Breakout EDU en español Facebook group (JOIN IT! JOIN IT!) voiced the concern that some of the clues she had seen were nearly impossible for students to figure out, not having any prior breakout experience! (My Cuba o casa breakout activity is REALLY hard!) It is true that our threshold of clue complexity increases as we are exposed to more and more clue types and learn what kinds of information to be looking for in order to piece together combinations for the five basic BreakoutEDU lock types. Why not start with simple clues to get students’ feet wet and figure out the basic rhythm of a BreakoutEDU activity?
To that end, I give you “UN ESCAPE CON ABUELA“: the simplest of simple breakouts (as far as clues are concerned). It is all in Spanish, and it is written with high frequency vocabulary from the first five units of my Spanish 1 curriculum, so it should be SUPER EASY to tackle, even early on in the year! It will prepare your students well for many years of fantástico Spanish breakouts in the future. And by golly, I still can’t bring myself to charge you for these darn breakouts. BreakoutEDU is fun; paying for Breakouts isn’t! It is free for now…until my husband finds out that I just spent all day creating a free product 😉
Love you guys, happy back-to-school!
You are amazing!!! Thank you so much!!!!
I love your ideas. Thank you so much for sharing!
This looks so awesome, and I can’t wait to use it! Thanks so much for sharing 🙂 My class sizes are between 15 and 19 students. Would I need to split them into smaller groups and have multiple boxes?
I just found an idea in the Facebook group! 🙂 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-o_4D6fBsVklKn-Tg9O4Dw0BnbGghCBzHybFBmxH7Mg/mobilebasic
Fantastic! Thanks for sharing the link!
Thank you for creating an “Intro to Breakout Box” Some students even struggled with how the lock functions, let alone solving the puzzles! This was perfect timing…I think we are hooked! Tell the Mr. that students were very happy to have such a well-constructed, beautiful to look at game to introduce our unit on shopping, packing and tourism after Winter Break.
Even my least cohesive class was able to make it to Bolivia before the bell rang.
My advanced classes recycled la lotteria from before the break to check in on the winners, so the timing on that was excellent.
I was not able to find a 5 letter lock, so I created a cipher( F=M A=H R=B O =D none of the other letters mattered for this puzzle, so I just filled out the alphabet with other random letters) to post with the solutions because my lock did not have all the letters. It sort of worked.
Be aware that curious students need to be instructed to remove the lock and immediately lock it back shut and place it into the “parking lot” (I used a basket but others use an outline drawing for the 5 locks) to prevent accidental resets of the combinations. (learned that the hard way.) Very fun first day back!!!!!! Why did this take me so long to try?
Great tips; are you in the Breakout en español Facebook group? Share them there, I think everyone would be happy to have those great ideas! And glad to hear that everything went so well!
Is there an option of converting this to a digital breakout?
I haven’t ever made a digital one, but if someone would like to tackle it…email me!
Thank you for sharing this! I am struggling to join the Breakout Edu train, but after seeing how well and quickly you’ve taken to them I probably should figure them out! I hope to use this to guide me through it. Wish me luck!
Can’t wait to try it! My family took my Dad to a live breakout room over Thanksgiving. I appreciate the starter lesson because it does take a little getting used to.
Thank you, Martina, for sharing these plans. I am looking forward to trying my first breakout in the classroom. I am confused – what is inside the box for the students to find?
It could be a treat or it could be just a sign saying “We broke out” or it could be nothing! In my limited experience, students are excited to just finally open the box; they don’t care what’s inside!
Thanks Martina for sharing the BreakoutEDU resource!
If you are creating a digital breakout, do try out Deck.Toys. It is a new classroom engagement platform in beta and works well with creating lessons for languages.
https://blog.deck.toys/breakout-in-every-lesson/
Hi Martina. This is a great breakout! Thanks! I have a question about setup. It says we are to keep the key and give it to them when prompted with the password “cubanos”. How will they find the clue “cubanos”?
from answering the questions about the #authres article about places to visit in Habana, and pulling out the letters indicated in the answers.
As always, thank you so much for sharing your amazing resources. I was wondering if you are aware of any BreakoutEDU activities that are in English so they can be adjusted to whatever language one teaches. Since I don’t teach Spanish, I always have trouble making sense of various activities.
Hi Brigitte! I don’t have any personally, but the BreakoutEDU site has TONS of them; I am sure that some could be adapted easily for language classes!
I have the same question about “cubanos” and the key. There is no #authres article included in the plan…just a puzzle of a key and on the back it says “La llave está al lado del teléfono”. Do you have an optional #authres article to share? I would like to do this in our conference rooms in small groups where there aren’t phones. I may adapt the key lock to be something they have to text me–maybe they text me “cubanos” based on this article? Do you have one to share? Thanks, Martina!!
That was mistakenly left from the Cuba o casa breakout instructions (which I copied and pasted to create these ones). I fixed it awhile ago, though–have you downloaded the file again recently?
No, but I will right now! Thanks!
Hi Martina (or anyone else who has done this),
I am planning ahead for next school year and I want to make sure I leave time for this activity because I ran out last year and was bummed not to try it. Do you think this Breakout could be done in two, 43-minute class periods? If not, about how much time should I allot? I have 8th graders, and the readings should be fairly easy for them because we’ll be doing it second semester and the vocabulary will be almost all review.
Thank you!
I bet it could be done in one of your class periods, judging from what other teachers have said!
Ok, perfect! Thank you!
This is probably a dumb question, but do you have something that explains which locks are going on the large box and which ones are going on smaller boxes or bags that hold necessary items? Example- The kids need to find the blacklight flashlight before they can do chapter 4. Do you have the directional lock locking a small box that contains the flashlight, or do you just put all locks on the large box?
I didn’t use the small box in my Breakouts!