🪄 💻 A Harry Potter Themed Breakout

After the success with a recent digital breakout from VirtualEscapeRooms.org, it was time to try another one, this time based on the world of Harry Potter!

Click the image to access the site.

Matt Miller from DitchThatTextbook.com has many free digital escape rooms--and tips & planning templates, too!--available on his site, and sometimes he features particular breakouts. This one, along with the Winter Wonderland breakout, were featured in December.

Today students could choose to work individually or in small groups to work thorough the screens from this breakout. Shortly after getting started, though, most kids were talking with one another whether they had formed groups or not!

Breakouts are a great way to encourage collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving, and many times students learn to manage their expectations and work through frustration if their first responses don't allow them to move on or unlock the next page.

❆❅❄ Winter Wonderland Digital Breakout ❅❄❆

Are you looking for "that activity" to carry you into the holiday break? Or maybe you're looking for an extension to use with students as they wrap up their work this time of year? Or, like me, you have a small group of students visiting the library and need an activity for them? It might be a good time for a digital breakout!

We've both hosted classroom breakouts and worked through several library or advisory breakouts--both physical and digital--over time (you can read about them here), and today's breakout is very similar to others we've used. Today's breakout, Locked in a Winter Wonderland, comes from VirtualEscapeRooms.org, which was featured recently on Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook.

In fact, Matt Miller and Virtual Escape Rooms have a limited-time offer for this particular breakout, and you can get it for free when you enter the code "ditchbook" at checkout. You can access the breakout here. 

Students could sign up to participate in the breakout during advisory today, and after listening to the introduction to the activity, students could choose to work in groups or individually to tackle the breakout.

Once students got into the breakout and clicked around a little bit, the sleuthing and unlocking happened quickly! The largest group seemed to have an effective problem-solving approach and worked through the pages efficiently, while other groups took their time, but in the end, each of the groups was able to solve the lock combinations.

A great activity to get students using their problem solving skills and thinking critically--and to enjoy the season! ⛄