After hearing about Breakout Edu at ISTE this summer I knew
I had found my library orientation. I am opening a new STEAM middle school in
my district this year and the library is set up by genre, which is very
different than the libraries at the school my students would be coming from. My
goals for the orientation breakout edu were:
1.
I wanted the students to explore the catalog
(Destiny)
2.
I wanted the students to explore the genre
fiction section and the non-fiction section
3.
It had to take under 20 minutes to crack the
locks
I had not ordered a Breakout Edu kit from the website so I had to gather the materials
myself. I found luck at Home Depot for most of the locks, the Dollar Tree store
for the box and puzzle and Amazon for the rest.
I started by searching the breakouts on the BreakoutEDU
website and I found one called Locked In
The Library by Melanie Thompson (@22MThompson). She had some great clues
for books, but I needed my breakout to be more specific to my library. I took
a few of her clues (she has a gift for rhyming!) and I then created my own path
to the clues.
I had 4 teams (to open 4 locks) and I gave each team an
envelope with the first clue in it. I set the game up by reading a letter left
to me by the Ghosts of Duluth Schools past. At the opening of our school, the namesake of
our school made a big deal about how our school sits on a site where there has
been a school since the early 1900’s so I took this idea and ran with it.
See the Letter here.
I then told the students that had 20 minutes to figure out
the clues – and that the first clue would be found by going on the Destiny
catalog.
Here is the link to my set up page
– how I set up each clue. Many of the book clues came from Melanie Thompson’s
breakout so use the link above to get to those.
What I learned
I wish I had done five locks instead of four, it would have
made my groups much smaller since I have some large classes in some grades.
Most of the groups finished in 15 minutes but there were a
few groups that I had to give hints to in order for them to finish.
I had to put a DO NOT CHECK OUT sign onto the books that
I was using as clues – we lost one book
when someone checked it out (I hunted it down quickly) I originally thought
about checking the books out to myself but then in the catalog it shows the
book as OUT and the students would not think to look for a book that was
checked out.
A cheap puzzle from the dollar store does not last having 9
different classes come through to put it together and take it apart (but 24
pieces was the PERFECT size!)
 |
| Students celebrating when they opened a lock! |
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| Students excited that they solved the clues! |
All in all my goals of having the students use the catalog
and explore their new media center was a success. The students loved this new
way to orient them to the library and I have already had some teachers ask me
how they can set up something like this for their class for other learning
targets. Can’t wait to do this again!
