AKGTC + Breakout: Step 1: Review Breakout with a Physical Game

This post is part of a series that describes the learning journey of combining two great projects that focus on the hamlet of Acadia Valley, AB and the grade 4-5-6 combined class at Warren Peers School. The two intertwining projects will be 1) putting this community on the A Kids Guide to Canada Map AND 2) using our community information to build digital breakout tasks (with BreakoutEDU.com) that we will later share with parents, the school and the community. Follow the whole journey here.

Last school year, this grade 4-5-6 split class had done lots of work getting to know the ins and outs of creating breakouts – but we needed a little refresher after a long COVID break to get our “creator minds” in gear.

Principal/teacher Mrs. Fletcher Wilson gets in on the Breakout action

Step 1: Physical Breakout Review

Our kickoff to this combined project of Breakout building and Community discovery with the A Kids Guide to Canada MAP project was to participate in a physical Breakout game. So with masks and other COVID protocols in place for working as a group on a physical breakout, students are strategically placed in groups of 2 and are challenged to Break Out!

The Power of Yet

This breakout was a challenging, content-specific one about Parts of Speech. As I facilitate Breakout sessions with students across our district, it sure is interesting to see how students respond the first time or two in the area of grit or perseverance. So often, the students’ instinct is to give up the first time they try a lock and it doesn’t open. Many students don’t even know how to try something different, tweak their approach, or to “think outside of the box”. Thus, a big goal that I have for classes that play Breakout is to develop a “not-yet”, perseverance-driven growth mindset.

Next up: Step 2

Read about the rest of the “Ultimate Community Project” here.