Out-of-this-World Learning Fun with Breakout EDU

What if learning could be as exciting as a space adventure? The teachers at New York’s Yorktown Central School District are blending traditional science lessons with Breakout EDU games, creating an out-of-this-world engaging and memorable learning journey for their students.

Here’s how Fifth Grade Teachers Ms. Muldoon and Mrs. Strang, in collaboration with the district’s ESTEAM Tech Integration Specialist Mrs. Amanda Burns, helped students embrace the fun and creative side of learning with Breakout EDU.

Mission: ESTEAM

As they were wrapping up a science unit on the Earth’s spheres that included challenging students to develop a plan to sustain a human colony on Mars, Ms. Muldoon and Mrs. Strang started brainstorming ways their students could further demonstrate their understanding. These rockstar teachers wanted to pull this unit together with a culminating ESTEAM (Empathy, Science,Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) project. For support, the teachers turned to the guidance and expertise of Tech Integration Specialist Mrs. Burns who helped the class to create their own Breakout EDU games to demonstrate their understanding of the essential content.

Students collaborate to design their own Breakout EDU games.

Out-of-this-World Learning Fun

For their Breakout EDU game design project, students were assigned one of the Earth’s spheres. Each group was asked to research current environmental problems that the sphere faced and to find possible solutions to those problems.

These excited and hardworking students collaborated with one another to design Breakout EDU games that demonstrated their understanding of the material. In each game, students developed an opening story featuring young characters explaining an environmental problem. Group members then designed a series of locks that eventually lead to the player breaking out by solving the environmental problem. All final lock solutions were words or phrases that celebrated the importance of sustainability and taking care of our planet. 

Students perform the musical “Vacation to Mars” during their show-and-tell night.

To celebrate their collective creativity and hard work, the teachers planned a fun night of show-and-tell. Parents, students from other classrooms, and district administrators were all invited to watch the class perform the musical “Vacation to Mars - The Solar System for Younger Explorers” and play the Breakout EDU games the students created

So much fun was had that the Breakout EDU games have been archived for future 5th graders to play and learn about the earth with Breakout EDU!

Families get a chance to try to solve their students’ Breakout EDU game creations.

Blast Off with Breakout EDU

Students could have demonstrated their understanding and achieved curricular standards with a more traditional culminating project like a research paper or assessment, but Ms. Muldoon, Mrs. Strang, and Mrs. Burns got creative with Breakout EDU, offering their students an interactive and memorable adventure that will stay with them for years to come. Today's students need skills to solve real-world problems, and by giving them opportunities to collaborate, think critically, and persevere through challenges, Yorktown Central School District’s teachers are setting their students up for success

Ready to help your students blast off with Breakout EDU? Click here to start a free 14-day trial of Breakout EDU and let the adventures begin!