I’m so excited to share with you some creative ways teachers are using a classroom escape game in their classrooms!
The emoji escape challenges are a serious hit in classrooms! I’ve been completely blown away by how creative teachers are getting with these escape challenges. In this post, I’m featuring some of the most creative ways I’ve seen teachers immerse their students into learning with my emoji escape challenges.
If you’ve used these challenges in your classroom in a creative way, please post pictures on social media and tag me @performingineducation. I’d love to add more to this post!
Turning the Classroom Into “Emoji Island”
Decorating can really set the scene and immerse your students into the game structure. Kelsey Brust went above and beyond with her students, turning the map that’s included in the resource into a pirate ship, dressing as a pirate, and adding other decorations. She’s a serious rockstar for her students – follow her here.
Cheryl is another teacher that mastered the emoji decor. She made these awesome palm trees with emojis to match the resource. Follow her awesome classroom here!
I used bulletin board paper to create the emoji faces and trees. I drew several faces and hung them around the room and then made a tree trunk and cut some green paper into palm leaves. I was going to put coconuts on the trees but thought the emojis would look better. The students then got to take the emoji faces home. -Cheryl @Cherylfromtx
Using a Green Screen Video to Kick it Off
One of my favorite ideas is a video shared by Tracy Costa. She used a green screen to introduce the escape challenges in a very fun way! Click here to see the video she shared on Instagram.
I like to do exciting and unexpected things for my students. The green screen “Do Ink” app adds an element of magic to classroom instruction and engagement. I taught my second graders how to make green screen movies last year and my fourth graders use the app to present reports and projects orally.
I made this video to introduce the Escape from Emoji Island resource.
For this video, I began by writing a script to heighten the excitement level and build momentum. Then, I researched and selected background pictures that I wanted to have in the movie. The “Do Ink” app makes this whole process effortless.
I usually enlist some co-workers to do the videotaping, but for this video no one was around, so I propped my phone up and did it all by myself. Hence, the poor sound quality. The entire video process lasted 45 minutes. I recommend using an iPad instead because it will cut your entire time in half. Nevertheless, the memories that were created made it worth every single second. – Tracy Costa @proudteachermoments
Giving Teams Their Own Special Space
Randa Sullivan rocked her classroom setup by setting up a special place for each team to work together on the escape challenge. This made it easy for each team to know what their color was, and it also looked fantastic! Check out her awesome escape bulletin board as well. Simple, but makes a huge impact! Follow Randa here. She’s awesome!
Involving Parents
Nicole Donaldson did something that I love – she involved parents. Use parents to help teams without giving them answers. Parents are a great addition to the activity! Give her some love on Twitter!
This activity lent itself really well to volunteers helping in the classroom. Our Watch Dog Dad was able to jump right in and help teams work together and use resources throughout the classroom to solve the challenges. What a fun day it was for him to remember at his daughter’s school! -Nicole Donaldson @mrsdonaldson5th