In recent years, escape room-style activities have surged in popularity — and it’s easy to see why. If they’re created with care, escape room activities are an engaging way to teach a new topic, review information, or recapture students’ attention at points in the year where motivation and interest begins to lag (think: right before winter break or the end of the year). Plus, they also encourage and foster skills like teamwork and critical thinking.
If you’re thinking about incorporating escape rooms into your teacher toolbox, look no further. This post has everything you’ll need to either design your own escape room activity, or find escape room templates and activities that you can use right away!
How to Create a DIY Escape Room Activity
While it may seem a little daunting at first, an escape room activity makes for an engaging experience that’ll get your students excited to learn. And once you’ve established a process, you can use that escape room template for other content you’re teaching — just change out the puzzles and story for a new topic! Follow these six steps to help you create a DIY escape room experience for your students.
1. Define your learning goals
Before getting into the nitty gritty details of designing your escape room, it’s important to clearly identify your goals. What learning objectives or skills do you want your students to gain as they complete the activity? Is there a particular topic you want to introduce or review with your students? Or are you simply trying to foster a sense of community? Having an end goal in mind will help guide your design process and ensure that your escape room activity aligns with your curriculum and/or any learning standards you’re trying to meet.
💡 Pro Tip: Be mindful of the subject or topic that you’re teaching with an escape room. Be sure to ask yourself: are there any sensitivities with this topic that might be troubling or trivializing? If so, you might want to consider another method.
2. Create the storyline
In order to capture students’ interest and draw them into the activity, you’ll need to come up with a storyline that not only ties all the puzzles and clues together, but also creates an immersive experience for your students. The storyline you create should set the context for the escape room and provide the problem that needs to be solved. Some common storylines for escape room activities include: looking for hidden treasure, escaping from a thrilling circ*mstance, finding someone, or solving a mystery.
3. Design the puzzles
This is the fun part! Design a variety of clues and puzzles that are relevant to the topic you’re teaching using things like rebuses, riddles, logic puzzles, math problems, and/or hidden clues. For instance, you can have students solve an equation to obtain a numerical code. As you design the puzzles, decide if they should be solved sequentially or if they can be solved in any order to get the answer. Most importantly, remember to adapt puzzle ideas to your specific theme and learning goals.
4. Organize and prepare
With the story and clues in place, it’s time to set up the activity. Create and organize all the materials you’ll need for the escape room, including clue sheets, locks, or props related to your theme. Your clue sheets should clearly explain the rules, the learning objectives, any roles the students will play, and essential information about the storyline. If you’re using props, be sure you have backup materials in case anything malfunctions during the activity. And if you’re feeling extra creative and crafty, decorate the space to match the theme and create a truly immersive atmosphere.
💡 Pro Tip: Before the actual activity, test it yourself or with colleagues to gauge if the questions are too difficult, or if there are any improvements you can make.
5. Escape!
On the day of the escape room, go over any ground rules and learning objectives. Be available to provide hints or guidance when students get stuck but avoid giving away solutions too easily. It’s important to remember that there will probably be a few hiccups or confusion as students work through the puzzles.
6. Celebrate and discuss
Your students have escaped! It’s time to celebrate their success and reflect on the experience while it’s fresh. Ask questions to help students connect what they learned in the escape room to the topic they’re learning. This is also a great time to collect feedback from your students to understand what they enjoyed and what could be improved for future escape room activities.
Classroom Escape Room Ideas and Templates
Of course, creating your own escape room from scratch can be time-consuming. Check out these escape room templates and activities from TPT Teacher-Authors that are sure to be a hit with your students.
Escape Room Templates
These escape rooms templates allow you to create your own challenges, without having to start from scratch. The best part: they can be used with just about any grade level.
Escape Room Template 2 | Digital or In Person Use | For All Subjects by MsBolier
Social Studies Escape Room Template Kit – Create Your Own Escape Room by Nouvelle ELA
Math Escape Room Templates by Beyond the Worksheet
Escape Room Activities for Elementary Students
Introducing escape rooms to elementary students can be a fresh way to spark their curiosity and promote problem-solving and collaboration skills. These escape room activities are rigorous but age-appropriate, so you don’t have to worry about them being too complicated to solve.
by Jen Lium – Teaching in the Tongass
Grades: K-3 | Math, ELA
Main Ideas and Details Escape Room Cracking the Classroom Code® Reading Breakout by Teresa Kwant
Grades: 3-5 | ELA, Reading
Anger Management Escape Room Activity Game Island Vacation Theme by The Fancy Counselor
Grades: 3-6 | Social-Emotional Learning
Escape Room Activities for Middle School Students
With these escape room activities, your middle schoolers are given the opportunity to collaboratively tackle challenges on a variety of subjects.
Atoms Escape Room – 6th 7th 8th Grade Science Review Activity by Kesler Science
Grades: 6-8 | Science, Chemistry
Solving 2-Step Equations Digital Math Escape Room Activity by Scaffolded Math and Science
Grades: 7-9 | Algebra
The Outsiders, Do It for Johnny! Digital Escape Room by Danielle Knight
Grades 7-12 | ELA, Literature
Escape Room Activities for High School Students
These escape room activities for high school students are a fantastic way to get students invested in and excited to learn about advanced topics.
by Algebra Is My Domain
Grades: 8-12 | Algebra
Poetry Escape Room: Engaging Poetry Activity for Any Poetry Unit by Write on with Miss G
Grades: 9-12 | Poetry
Discover more escape room ideas and templates on TPT.
