Using One Breakout Box with 23 Students...

Breakout boxes are one of my favorite activities to incorporate review of learned skills.  The campus I taught at last year had a few boxes and I used it twice during the year, but I wanted to use it monthly, so I purchased my own over the summer. I prefer having my own box so that I always have it whenever I would like and so I know what each lock's code was set to from it's previous usage.  You can get a box with all of the locks on the Breakout EDU site.

I purchased the Single Breakout EDU kit so I had to figure out how to make one box work with 23+ students each month.  Here is how I have incorporated my Breakout Box every month this school year.

First of all, I absolutely LOVE the monthly puzzles in Megan's TPT store!  Her games are perfectly planned for primary students.

To set up the puzzles, I print off 6 of each puzzle I want my students to solve in groups.  I usually laminate the puzzles but if I ran out of time, I just place them in the plastic sleeves, as you can see here.

I set each puzzle in a stack on shelf in my classroom, with the hint cards and a post it note with the group's number and the team members names.

So now I have 6 groups with each group having the same materials to solve their puzzles.

Then I place 6 post-its around the classroom with each team's number and the name of that team's leader for the puzzles.  It also shows the teams the space in the classroom where they can work so that no other teams borrow their brains.

Click the pic below to see my sensational second graders solving puzzles together in their teams.

When we first started our Breakout Box in September, I would scaffold how to solve puzzles and we would solve puzzle number 1 at the same time, still in teams, and once a team solved it and opened the lock, we would learn about puzzle number 2, etc.  I started helping less each month and even allowed my students to take their team's puzzles to their work area and solve them in any order they would like.

To keep my students from crowding the box, the team leader has to send me a pic through Seesaw.  I walk around with my iPad while students are working, providing hints as hint cards are given to me, and if I get a Seesaw notification, I check the picture and then go to that team and let them know if it's correct or incorrect.  If it's correct, they can go to the box to open a lock.

Here are some screen shots of my iPad with answered puzzles.

Once I check a team's work, then I simply click X and delete the item.  No need on sending it to families, it's just an assessment for me to see.

Click below to see one of the team's opening a lock!

Once a lock is open, we all celebrate and everyone keeps working on the remaining puzzles until we have all the locks opened.

Oh, and for fun, I play detective music on Spotify the whole time.  We love Pink Panther and Mission Impossible the most!