Strengthen student resilience with a Halloween escape room
As much as we love the social-emotional side of teaching, we may not always be sure of the right thing to say when a student needs more resilience to keep trying at something they think is hard. This article gives you the tools (i.e., the exact language in a cheat sheet at the end of this blog) to help students become stronger emotionally and academically. If you want to see that quick cheat sheet you can use in your classroom, click here.
Today, we’ll look, specifically, at how one of education’s latest trends – 360° digital escape rooms – lend themselves to a resilience building exercise for 4th and 5th graders. But first, let ‘s touch on the basics of a 360° digital escape room and student resilience!
What is a 360° digital Halloween escape room?
“A digital escape room uses the same principles as a physical [escape] game, but all of the clues and puzzles are online. This feature makes them readily accessible, eliminates setup, and allows individual participation.
The Library and Learning Commons at Florida State University
10 reasons you and your students will love 360° Halloween Digital Escape Rooms
- The setting is a 360° moveable photo; clues are hidden in the image
- It’s a tech-easy classroom activity
- Students may have to explore how to get started
- Students use prior classroom instruction and curiosity to solve clues
- Determination is the fuel for success
- Students build grit and problem-solving skills
- Groups with strong teamwork skills usually escape first
- Students push through frustration and overcome challenges
- Puzzles are ambiguous and exciting at the same time
- A problem-based scenario flows throughout the escape room i.e., you are locked in a Halloween scene and you must solve a series of puzzles in order to escape.
What is a 360° digital Halloween escape room?
A 360° Halloween escape room has an interactive background image of a Halloween or haunted house setting. As students move the mouse around the image, the picture moves! Also, the theme, decorations, and clues are related Halloween or haunted houses.
Right now, I have four 360° Halloween escape rooms in my TPT store.
- Character Traits (most popular)
- Place Value Review
- Multi-syllabic Word Games
- Prefixes and Suffixes
Each of these escape rooms has at least eight puzzles. Each puzzle requires students to answer multiple standards-based questions about the respective content area. Check out the video I made that walks you through the puzzles for the haunted house place value 360° digital escape room.
For example, the picture below, (which is from my best-selling Character Traits Halloween Reading Escape Room) shows the first of three questions that students are presented with inside a series of questions after reading a 200-word passage. Students must answer all three questions in order to solve the clue and go to the next room.
How do escape rooms build student resilience?
So, now that you’ve seen the magic of 360° digital escape rooms, let’s look at what student resilience is and strategies for strengthening it.
The reason I use escape rooms in my classroom is to counteract the mindset “this is hard, I don’t want to try again.” However, when they are working to get out of a 360° digital escape room, they are encouraged by what they are engaged with. They push past the frustration, and into new learning.
What is student resilience?
Resilience is when a student is able to get back up after a perceived failure.
These students are curious enough to want to step forward and brave enough to step forward even when the path or the outcome are unknown. While they know their limits, they push themselves beyond their comfort zone.
What can I do to promote student resilience?
The most important things we as teachers can do to promote student resilience are:
- Develop strong emotional connections with students
- Help them understand what a healthy risk is
- Ask questions, don’t solve problems students can solve
- Teach problem-solving skills
- Label emotions
- Demonstrate coping skills
- Model embracing mistakes and help students embrace mistakes
- Promote the positive in any situation
- Model resiliency i.e., deep breathing, labeling emotions, talking through problems
“When kids have the skills and the confidence to confront and work through their problems, they learn that they have what it takes to confront difficult issues.”
psycom.net
Teacher Talk to Build Student Resilience
What does promoting student resilience look and sound like in the classroom?
A digital escape room may be a new experience for many students. So, let’s set students up for what’s about to happen. You can start by saying:
“You may experience some things today that – at first – you think you don’t know how to solve. When that happens, I want you to think about another time, when – at first – you didn’t know how to solve a problem. Ask yourself some good questions:
- What did you try?
- How many times did you try?
- Who did you turn to for help?
- What resources did you use?
- What made it easier for you?
- How did you ultimately solve the problem?
- What other questions could I ask myself now to help me solve this problem?
Remind students of my grandmother’s wisdom:
“When you ask yourself good questions, you get good answers!”
When you show students a few of these good questions, you are helping them take their first steps on the path of resilience!
As a final step to strengthen student’s resilience, you’ll want to give them the opportunity to reflect on their experience with the 360° digital escape room. The opportunity to think about how they engaged in a unique learning environment, can only help to strengthen their resilience as long as you are by their side to help make sure their interpretations are empowering. Here are a few of the questions I ask students after a haunted house 306° digital escape room:
Reflections Questions to Strengthen Student Resilience
- What mental strategies did you use when you didn’t know what to do?
- How could you be more successful in the future?
- Name one thing each of your group members did to help your group escape?
- Describe one way your group helped each other during the 360°digital escape room?
- What lessons BEFORE today helped you the most during the 360° digital escape room?
If you love the idea of strengthening student resilience with a unique 360° digital escape room, check out one of my 16 different 360° digital escape rooms. Each one is aligned to 4th or 5th grade standards.
If you want the exact language that will help you strengthen student’s resilience, you can grab a copy here.
Free bonus resource
Want to get a taste of this new technology and see for yourself how much fun you can have with this no prep resource? Try out a FREE escape room now!
