ESCAPE ROOM: EARTH DAY - Environmental Issues, 10 Challenges, Resources and Answer Key

Using an Escape Room to develop curriculum knowledge is an exciting activity that will inspire learners from 3rd to 6th Grade. This Escape Room is a great resource for exploring human impact on the Environment. Not only that, it makes a fantastic, fun, engaging – yet thought-provoking activity to share with students for World Earth Day each year.

The curriculum content of this Escape Room is linked to Geography and the Environment, in particular:

• To know the four targets to help protect the Earth (renewable energies, reduce consumption in meat, rewild the Earth, restock the oceans)
• To know the language and meaning of the key vocabulary associated with environmental issues
• Understand how green plants and forests support life on Earth
• Habitats, food chains and food webs
• How human diet is impacting on global change

The aim of the Escape Room is to provide jeopardy for the children to work under pressure to solve 10 clues to help raise their knowledge of The Environment and the impact humans are having on the Earth. The 10 Challenges within this Escape Room will support knowledge and understanding of how our actions are changing the Earth, but what we can do to reverse those changes and help protect the Earth for many generations to come.

Included within this Escape Room:

• Pupil Answer Book (Code Key Booklet)
• Answer Booklet for teachers
• Starting script to set the scene of the Escape Room and explain what the students must do
• Concluding script, celebrating the learning which has taken place and allows the students to “leave” the Escape Room
• Table labels for students to name their own teams
• Full instructions to be able to simply print and go within your own classroom

Before beginning, you will need to prepare the following:

• A copy of the Pupil Workbook for each group
• A set of table team names for every group – prepared beforehand and given to each group to set up their own working space
• IT sources and research materials if required
• Initial Starting Script sharing the problem to the children
• Completion Script celebrating the completion of the challenge

Children do not need prior knowledge of the Environment to complete this Escape Room so is suitable for a starter challenge to a new topic. The ability to have access to research resources will support the answers. This Escape Room is ideal as a review of learning to identify what the children have learnt and retained as a result of completing the study unit of the Environment, and human impact on the Earth.

The activity begins by the teacher reader the Initial Message received. It clearly tells the children that they are required to help raise their understanding of the four key challenges humans face in order to preserve the Earth for many generations to come. The accurate completion of each of the challenges enables the students to move from one challenge to another. They must complete each challenge correctly before moving onto the next challenge, continuing the Escape Room collecting all ten code keys!

After the 10th activity – the teacher can read the final script which reviews the learning the children have undertaken as they have completed each of the challenges. This script, together with team labels and the opening challenge script are contained within the Resource Pack.

Each activity focuses and builds the children’s knowledge of The Environment and human impact on the Earth.

The 10 activities are based on the following outcomes:

• Code breaking activity – using letters and numbers to find the four Challenges facing humans which can support the preservation of the Earth for many generations to come
• Word Search to introduce 25 key words related to the Environment ensuring that children develop a wide vocabulary. There is also an extra hidden word which the children must find in order to solve the Code Key and move to the next challenge. This will introduce students to the term “Environmentalist” and see this as a mantle which they take on throughout the Escape Room and beyond.
• Crossword to complete which introduces further important information to the children – there are 13 clues to solve.
• Positive and negative actions of humans impacting on planet Earth (Matching activity)
• Rainforests and the role green plants have upon sustaining all living things on Earth (Cloze Procedure)
• How do plants produce oxygen? (Sequencing activity)
• Habitats and living things within those habitats (Matching)
• Food chains: Sequencing and matching animals to positions in food chains, as well as the vocabulary associated to their positions within the food chain
• Food chains in different habitats – grassland, forest, ocean, artic.
• True or False: Awareness of how human dietary habits are impacting on the Earth, and how, by changing specific elements, the Earth can be protected.

When all 10 activities are completed, and the children have gained the correct Code Keys from each activity, the final celebratory script can be read which reviews the learning and informs the children that they have been successful and can leave the Escape Room!

Setting up the Escape Room

1. Children should be split into groups of no more than four and be placed in their own workspace.

2. Access to IT and research materials should be provided to allow children to research answers to questions and review their own knowledge, as well as checking answers.

3. Each group should have a Code Key Booklet and decide on a team name

4. Read the Initial Message to the children to set the challenge in context. Discuss what this means, and what the activity entails.

5. Turn to Code Key 1. Agree with the children a set time to complete the problem in – this ensures that the children stay on task and maintains the Escape Room element of working under pressure.

6. At the end of the time, children should have filled in the Code Key in their booklet. The teacher can then check the accuracy of all the groups and talk through the responses the children should have.

7. Move on through the remaining challenges until all 10 have been completed.

8. For those groups who have been successful, they are then able to read the completed statement where they find out if they have escaped the Escape Room!

There are other ways of running Escape Room activities, for example, each activity could be set up on 10 tables and the children then move from table to table completing the activity. This would reduce the need for as many resources, and access to non-fiction sources and Internet Resources could then be targeted at specific Challenges.

The Escape Room should last for at least 2 hours.

We hope that your children enjoy this Escape Room.

Best wishes and thank you for choosing INSPIReducation!