ALEX Learning Activity

This activity is a digital breakout to enhance a unit with animal standards or for classes that have a field trip to the Birmingham Zoo. It can be used before or after the field trip or during the unit. It is an activity that will build collaborative and critical thinking. It can be used as a whole group activity for K-2 classrooms or for teachers/classrooms that are not familiar to digital breakouts. It can be an activity for small groups in K-5 rooms if students are familiar with digital breakouts. 

This Learning Activity was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo. 

The students will:

• use information on the digital breakout to solve problems.
• analyze patterns and apply observations.
• work collaboratively in groups for a common goal: breaking out.
• build inferencing skills by reading the mystery and clues and then using these clues to solve the digital breakout.
• enhance communication skills by working together in pairs, groups, or a whole class to complete and solve the digital breakout.
• use high-order thinking skills and perseverance to solve the mystery/problem posed in the digital breakout.
• solve word problems that call for the addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20. Students may use objects, a drawing, or equations to represent the problem.

**This activity is a great addition to an animal unit of study or as a culmination activity after the unit or a field trip to the zoo. 

The goal of the breakout is to use the skills in the learning objectives to analyze and apply information on the digital breakout to discover codes to unlock locks.

Teacher Directions: 

1. If students have not participated in a digital breakout, try this one called SOAR,  as a class. It is a great introduction into solving digital breakouts.  

2. After completing SOAR, discuss what strategies students needed to complete the breakout: cooperation, communication, perseverance, and problem-solving.

3. Introduce the Zoo Summer Camp Mystery digital breakout.  Explain to the students that they will need to work together to solve the mystery and breakout of this digital game. 

4. The teacher will project the game on the board/screen.  If you have older students, you may want to complete this in the computer lab or with students in pairs sharing a device.  (This shortened URL can be used to allow students to log in independently, or you can log them in: https://goo.gl/jwfdej.)

5. The teacher will read the mystery/story at the top of the digital breakout.  The teacher will ask: Do you notice anything that might give us a clue to solve the mystery? (Students will probably tell you to click the pictures or the hyperlinked word)

6.  Work through the digital breakout together. When you get to the "Giraffe Feeding", K-1 students may want to access math counters to solve it. Students may also use drawings to solve the problem.

7. After completing the digital breakout, discuss how the group improved from the first digital breakout (SOAR). 

The breakout has a self-checking feature built in and students/groups will be provided a confirmation screen at the end notifying that the group broke out successfully.  

Classes can evaluate their work during the process of breaking out with these questions:  

• What was the most difficult part of this breakout?
• Which part of the breakout made you proud to solve?
• What skills did you need to complete this breakout?
• How could we improve our communication skills in the next breakout? 

Before playing Breakout with the class, you may want to take the time to work through the Breakout yourself to have an understanding of how to play the Breakout. This is a teacher answer sheet with codes and where to find them in the Digital breakout: https://goo.gl/Kiqi7U.

DO NOT share answers with students.  Please allow them to use clues they discover to figure out the lock codes. 

This Digital Breakout can be done as a whole group, in small groups, or individually. Before assigning this Digital Breakout in small groups or individually, I would highly recommend doing another breakout from the Digital Breakout site like Catch the Bus or Soar as a whole class, so students can understand the structure of a Digital Breakout.