Education

Escape Room Ideas and Templates for Every Classroom

Published on October 23, 2023

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 circumstance, 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.

The cover image for the Escape Room Template 2 resource available on TPT

Escape Room Template 2 | Digital or In Person Use | For All Subjects by MsBolier

The cover image for the Social Studies Escape Room Template Kit resource available on TPT

Social Studies Escape Room Template Kit – Create Your Own Escape Room by Nouvelle ELA

The cover image for the Math EscapesTemplate resource available on TPT

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.