Project eTwinning “The great escape”

Link to Twinspace:

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/92098/

About the project:

At the moment, sustainable development is a topical issue and escape games are very popular. So we decided to use those 2 elements as the main ingredients of our project. Take international teams, add a pinch of gamification, a touch of creativity, a lot of respect and team spirit and students will improve their skills by playing escape games and creating their own and in the end students will be more respectful and open-minded citizens.

Aims:

→ Raise awareness about sustainable development in a fun and motivating way, using escape games and innovative activities.

→ Develop foreign languages and ICT skills by collaborating and working in teams. Develop cross-curricular activities.

→ Develop mutual respect and citizenship thanks to international teams.

→ Encourage students to express themselves, show their creativity, boost their self-confidence by creating their own games. 

Expected results: 

Public Twinspace. Exhibitions and /or presentations in the partner schools (dissemination).

Students will learn in a fun and motivating way. They will improve their English and ICT skills and will learn to be more respectful and responsible by working in teams. By creating their own escape games, they will be more confident and will realize they can be agents of change, which is a great asset for their future life.

Skills developed:

→ cross curricular skills : English, ICT, chemistry, sustainable development

→ communication skills in English : learn to communicate in an efficient way / mediation 

→ ICT Skills / eSafety

→ team work: learn to collaborate, make decisions and compromises, respect each other, develop team spirit

→ creativity and taking of initiatives: create puzzles, an escape room, learn to manage a task in team to reach a common goal

→ solving problems

→ use information in an efficient way, ask for help and benefit from the guidance of escape rooms professionals

SCHEDULE AND ACTIVITIES

early Nov

2019

LAUNCHING OF THE PROJECT : students received a letter and had to decipher rebuses to find out the identity of their partners, and do a jigsaw puzzle to get access to the Twinspace of the project and check  the identity of their partners.

Letter to parents and consent forms for pictures and videos (see at the bootom of the page)

early Nov. 2019

INTRODUCTION

1) Who is it? : students had to prepare materials by introducing themselves in small national groups (recording + picture collage), presentations were then used in activity 3.

2) Rules: students had to accept the rules of the project and were taught about eSafety rules as well.

mid-Nov.

2019

3) International teams : to discover their teams, students had to complete a learningapps activity. They had to match the “Who is it?” recordings and the picture collages, a good way to get to know their partners while practising their listening skills.

4) Impressions: students had to share their impressions about the breaking activities.

end Nov. 2019

BREAKING NEWS 1 : students received breaking news about attacks by Pollutor in schools . This enabled us to arouse students’ curiosity and set the scenario (for them to know Pollutor and the context of the game, but they still didn’t know about the escape game and the coming challenges)

5) Team Spirit: after reading about the threat of Pollutor, each team had to show their team spirit and determination by coming up with a team name and a simple motto.

early December

2019

CHALLENGE 1 : in each partner country, students were attacked by Pollutor and locked up in their classroom. The countdown started and they had to figure out ways to escape the room in time. They had to solve puzzles (related to pollution), look for clues and passwords, unlock boxes, do chemistry experiments... 

Then on the Twinspace they could discover what happened in the other countries (with pictures and videos) and share their reactions.

mid-Dec. 2019

BREAKING NEWS 2 : students received a letter from the “Anti-Pollutor” European Commission. They wanted to congratulate students for their achievements but also to ask them to challenge Pollutor and defeat him for good by creating their own escape game together.

Students accepted to take up the challenge and prepared questions to interwiew escape game professionals in Canada (Jeff and Brian from Immersive Tech). Later on, they received a message with answers to their questions and great tips to create their puzzles

Xmas break

Students shared what was typical in their countries for the Christmas season. This way, they could discover other cultures. 

January 2020

CHALLENGE 2: the creation of the escape game to defeat Pollutor. Each international team was in charge of creating one puzzle for the game. Students had to choose one possible topic (to avoid repetitions) related to sustainable development and were then free to take initiatives and decide the type of puzzles / tools they wanted to use.

Feb 2020

Continuation of challenge 2; After choosing their topic and creating their puzzles, students in each country also had to prepare the materials they would have to use in the escape room. 

They were also asked to take part in a brainstorming for the final puzzle (the final virtual padlock to unlock the door).

March 2020

11/03/2020 : Students in France could test their escape room (they only knew one puzzle, the one they had created, so they were in charge of another one when playing the game, as for the final puzzle, they had no idea what it was about) just before the lockdown...

But because of the Covid-19 pandemic, schools were then closed, so unfortunately students in Greece and Slovakia couldn’t test the game...

Week 23/03/2020

CANCELLED: the initial plan was to have other classes play the game in each partner country that week. But this had to be cancelled because of the lockdown. 

June 2020

EVALUATION: quick survey and final messages

September 2020

Testing the Game in Slovakia and Dissemination activities