BreakoutEDU & Spy Training

Last week, I completed my first room transformation! Let me tell you, it was a lot of work and prep but it was SO worth it. To see the excitement and awe on my students' faces was enough to make me do it one hundred times over again. I also paired it with our first BreakoutEDU experience, which I recommend looking into! I'm here to give you the rundown of the day, from the room transformation to the actual breakout game. I need to give props to the amazing Hope King, because she is where our inspiration came from. You can read about her spy set-up HERE. 

BreakoutEDU is played similarly to the Escape Game/Breakout Game/million other names with the same concept. Students are given a storyline and a set amount of time to solve the puzzles in order to "breakout" in time. You can learn more about the product HERE.

Now buckle up for the break down...

The Kit

This is everything that comes with the Breakout kit to use in your classroom. I purchased two kits so I could split my class into two teams so there was more involvement with each student.

Now the kit is designed so that nothing else needs to be purchased in order to play the game. However, I tend to make things harder on myself so I didn't stop here. I thought it would be more fun for the kids to have to search around the room to find other locked jars that contained clues for them to find the next pieces of the puzzle. So I searched high and low for inexpensive jars that would be able to secure the locks in place. This was WAY harder than it seems. Either the jars were too expensive, or they didn't have big enough openings for the lock to fit through. We finally were able to find some at Michael's for a reasonable price. There are 5 locks total; one goes on the large box, and one on the small box, so I bought 6 jars (3 per team) to secure the rest of the locks. I painted 3 of them white and 3 of them black in order to distinguish which jars belonged to which team.

*Now this step is completely unnecessary. The hasp (the blue clamp with all of the holes in the picture) is meant to house all of the locks and students just work on getting the locks off in order to open the final box.

The Game

Once you purchase the kit, you have access to all of the games that are in the database. My class played "Show me the Chocolate Money" by Patti Harju. I just tweaked it a little bit to fit the spy theme and clues being around the room. These puzzles all have to do with money, which was perfect because my students just finished a unit on money. Let me tell you, it was RIGOROUS! Identifying the money was not the most complicated, but figuring out what to do with these coin values in order to solve the puzzles definitely required some higher-level thinking. The biggest tip that I can give you if you are using separate containers is to really think through the path of where the students will go. My co-worker and I double, triple, quadruple checked that each step, puzzle, and lock matched with the next one before we finally locked all of our jars. I have included all of the puzzles that go with this game so you can see what students had to accomplish. 

They had to match the value with the written amount, and then figure out what word it spelled to open the word lock. More cupcake pieces were added to throw students off. 

Students used the cipher code to unveil a message that said "Look in the cabinet for the dollar sign" which gave them the location for the key to open up the key lock.

They had to identify which piggy bank had the most money, which gave them a three digit number for the 3 digit lock. 

Students had to identify the coin amounts on arrows and then rank them from least to greatest to open the direction lock. 

They added up these amounts to get a dollar amount which gave them a 4 digit code to unlock the final lock..and then they escaped! 

As you can see, some serious thinking had to happen here, and they only had an hour to do it! I had one team break out and one that didn't, which led to some good conversation. As this was their first breakout, I had to offer a LOT of assistance, especially in the beginning to get them to understand how they had to use the puzzle pieces in order to figure out a lock combination. Each team also had two hint cards that they could use at any time but the whole team had to agree to use it. These hints were very blunt as to what to do, where as my assistance throughout the game was more subtle. 

The Set-up

To create the spy lab, it's really quite easy: WHITE string and black lights. That's it! Make sure the string is purely white...my co-worker put up all of her strings and when we tested them in the black lights, they barely showed up because her string was more off white than mine. She ended up taking them all down and redoing them in the morning...heart break! I used two of these black lights and they did the job! Ask around...you never know what parents or co-workers might have laying around! 

Also make sure you black out your windows to get it really dark...a spray bottle and garbage bags does the trick. I also had Matrix music playing in the background to really set the stage. We also dressed like spy agents to act the part! 

I stood outside my door which had a sign that read "Spy Training Headquarters...restricted access." I had a clipboard with which team they were on, along with a name tag which said Agent + their last name. I scanned their fingerprint with an app called Finger Reader, which either turned red or green. If it was red, I made a big deal about it and said I was going to keep an eye on them in there...you should have seen the anticipation of what their fingerprint was going to show. Before entering, I told them they had to avoid the laser beams, and if one was touched it would activate a silent alarm. Before they started, I said that they were spies in training and they were going to be put through a series of tests to see if they had what it takes to become a spy. 

This was on each desk when they walked in. 

Here's another tip about how I kept the clues separate. On each puzzle piece I either put a W or a B to represent the black or white team. I made it very clear that if it didn't have your letter on it that it didn't belong to your team. I had some elements of all puzzles spread around the room, but the bulk of the pieces had to be found when they opened up a jar. However, all of the first puzzle pieces (cupcakes) were spread around the room so they had a starting point. Then inside each jar, I wrote a clue about where they could find the next set of pieces. They were stashed in places like our library, a student's desk, a book inside someone's cubby...we had to get creative since there weren't many hiding places. Once they got the next set of puzzle pieces they figured it out in order to open the next jar until they reached the final box. Once they opened that, there was a sign that said "Congratulations, you're now an official spy." Some suggest to put a prize in the final box, but I wanted this to be more of an intrinsic motivation and not to attach it with a material prize.  

I know this was a SUUUUUPER long post, but I hope this gives you all the information you need to complete a room transformation or a breakout experience of your own! Please contact me if you still have any questions. I would love to see your rooms and/or hear how your breakout experience went!