Digital Back to School Escape Room - Escape the School Bus Teambuilder Icebreaker

This back to school digital escape room activity is the perfect teambuilder icebreaker for the start of the school year. Use this engaging activity to foster classroom community and improve students’ team building and problem-solving skills during the first week of school!

Students will begin by reading a backstory that sets up the escape room. On their way to school one morning, the eccentric bus driver, Mr. Whimsywig, takes a detour to another dimension in an effort to bring the best of the students onboard. They will then complete a series of back to school-themed puzzles, riddles, and tasks, recording the answers from each of the six stations to later use as a passcode to escape the bus.

This is a Google-compatible activity, and students complete all the work on the computer. This works well with distance learning, 1:1 classrooms, remote teaching, Google Classroom, or for online education. Although it works especially well during the first week of school, this activity can be completed at any point in the school year.

Included in this Digital Back to School Teambuilder Icebreaker:

➡️ Escape Room Narrative Backstory: Introduce the activity with this highly-engaging one-slide narrative backstory that sets up the escape room and hooks students into this digital back to school escape room activity.

➡️ Student Instructions: Student instructions written in the form of poems are included for each of the six digital tasks. Where appropriate, tech tips are also provided to help students complete the activities in the Google Slides document.

➡️ Digital Escape Room Activities: The resource includes all the digital slides students need to complete the activities (hiding homophone challenge, pictogram activity, spelling sort, back to school digital maze, nonfiction reading with multiple choice, encryption activity, and more!). After each task, a space is provided for students to write their answers. When all tasks are completed, students will reveal the passphrase needed to escape the school bus.

➡️ Teacher Answer Key: Use the included detailed teacher answer key that shows how each task is completed successfully to check students’ work! This will help you determine a winner of this digital back to school teambuilder icebreaker and can also be used as a way to review each of the tasks with students after the escape room is complete.

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