Our littlest learners have so much potential when we give them opportunities to shine. In working with educators from all across the world, I always promote all of the amazing things our littles can do, and yes, that includes Breakout EDU! Educators, and especially early elementary educators, are always looking for ways to keep students on task, engaged, and excited about learning. Breakout EDU has it all! From curriculum-aligned games, digital or kit options, mini-games, Lock of the Day, and so much more, your students will be begging and asking you to play again. What I love about Breakout EDU is the excitement in the students’ actions and voices when I walk down the hall or into a classroom with Breakout boxes. They all are intrigued by what is in the box, where the key is, and what their mission is, no matter if I’m in a preschool, kindergarten, first, or second-grade classroom. In order to make this experience one that they’ll want to try again, no matter if they breakout or not, here are some tips to get started with digital and kit games for our youngest learners, Pre-K - 2.
Breakout EDU is a great program that promotes teamwork and collaboration among students. Any group of students can benefit, but sometimes it’s hard to ease your students into something new without overwhelming them. I decided to incorporate Breakout EDU for my 4th graders to improve their teamwork and problem-solving skills and the process couldn’t have gone smoother! Read more to see how I integrated Breakout EDU into my classroom for the first time to ensure student success!
When you’ve found a teaching tool that impresses students, teachers, instructional leaders and school board members in equal measure, you know you’re doing something right.
On any given day, you can find SMPCS’s Supervisor of Accountability and Library Media, Heather Wysokinski, looking for ways to support her team of school-based library media specialists. Part teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, and program administrator, the library media specialist role is complex. Their goal? Building life-long reading and learning habits in a digital age, by providing engaging instruction, resources, and services to their students, staff, and community. This team of library specialists also understands that education engages students when it matches their interests and aspirations. Heather and her team are always looking for innovative writing, books, and tools that students and teachers both love.
Social-Emotional Learning became a popularized educational movement during the early 1990s through the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), an organization that was founded to bring together educators, psychologists, child well-being advocates, and researchers with the purpose of helping integrate social and emotional development into school curriculums.
As we embark on a new year, many educators are looking for ways to escape the screen time binge from the break and bring the excitement of collaboration back to the classroom.
Our kit-based games are the perfect tool to get kids active and engaged after weeks of being away from school.
For nearly seven years, classrooms around the world have played Breakout EDU kit games to engage, collaborate, problem-solve and deepen connections.
Students learn best when they are engaged! Students who are engaged are motivated and curious which makes learning experiences more meaningful. Engagement brings out the 4Cs: critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. Engaging your students with the 4C’s is a win for you and for your students. Breakout EDU games, kit and digital, are the perfect way to engage your students in meaningful learning.
Once the students have broken out, keep the learning going with a Breakout EDU extension activities.
o gauge a students’ progress and understanding of lessons, educators use formal and informal assessments. Formal assessments are systematic, typically being standardized or aptitude-based exams. Students usually study and prepare for these assessments in advance, and final scores may be compared to established standards and benchmarks. Informal assessments are observation-based tools, typically being more spontaneous to get a more natural feel for a student's progress and insight into areas in which they may need more help.
Informal assessments are just as important as formal assessments, as they can help identify potential problem areas during day-to-day lessons, allowing teachers to quickly address them and ensure all students are understanding content.
Educators are always looking for new ways to make lessons and projects highly engaging for students. One way to do this is by harnessing the high engagement students have with technology to transform them into active creators! An easy way to bring an inquiry-based learning strategy into your classroom is by using the Breakout EDU Game Design Studio.
Well-designed games—unlike competitive multiple-choice quiz games—provide immersive experiences for students. Like novels, films, plays, and other media, teachers instructor may use high-quality tools like games to help students access the curriculum while keeping engagement high. The “fun” of gameplay is a core component of why games are so successful with children, according to educators. Games can help children develop important, yet difficult, skills that they would otherwise avoid.
Classroom discussions challenge students to think deeply and articulate their ideas to develop their critical thinking and communication skills. During classroom discussions, students can strengthen their understanding of a topic by listening to their peer’s perspectives, asking questions, and sharing their own reasoning.
Breakout EDU games and 4C cards help facilitate meaningful class discussions.
As we continue to adapt to remote learning, Breakout EDU is here to help bring collaboration and engagement to your virtual classes. By incorporating Breakout EDU digital games and digital game design courses, distant learners can still bond with their classmates and immerse themselves into their lessons.
When we started Breakout EDU, we really didn’t know what type of adventure the next five years would bring us, aside from a few splinters and new found love for gaming. Fast forward to late 2019 when we got an email from the d.school saying that they’ve been experimenting escape rooms for the past few years as an alternative to testing.
You may already know that Breakout EDU is perfect for engaging students through creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking in a digital world. While digital team building games are great for distance learning, the true heart of Breakout EDU is the kit-game experience. With our guidelines for playing in light of social distancing, there’s never been a better time to have it all! Breakout EDU games are team-building experiences that can be played safely in-person or collaboratively online.
With so many students now learning in a mostly-virtual environment, one of the most impactful human elements of classroom learning that has suffered is collaboration. Throughout the initial phases of quarantine, the 4Cs (collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking) as a whole took a bit of a hit, as many teachers found themselves working hard to adjust their teaching to get content out to students in a new and changing environment. Now that digital-first learning is the new normal, we have seen more and more examples of teachers who are harnessing the wonderful power of digital tools to bring those critical skills back into play!
I recently got a chance to sit down with Billings, Montana high school teacher-librarian/technology integration specialist (aka a lady who has practically seven full-time jobs and crushes every one of them with her magic and enthusiasm) Shaundel Krumheuer. She had hosted a special event in her library, and with her two library colleagues, ran four games simultaneously with nine groups over the course of three days. If that gives you the mouth-sweats (as she would say), she actually called it “one of the most rejuvenating days” she’s experienced in the library. Here’s what else she had to say about it: