If you are a teacher of the English language and your A1/A2 level students enjoy playing games, working as a team, and solving puzzles, then Elementary ESL Escape Room is the resource you’ve been looking for. The complete edition contains 84 puzzles covering a huge range of essential vocabulary and grammar that students encounter in those early stages of learning a new language.
Five minutes before the class, all you need to do is flick through the contents page, print out a few puzzles (five or six will last about 30mins) that are relevant to what the students have been studying and take note of the single digit answer code to each puzzle. Put those numbers in a row and you have a secret code that students need to work out by solving each puzzle before the other teams to win the game . So, with minimal prep time, you are all set for an exciting review class that the students will want to play again and again. And with 84 puzzles to combine as you see fit, there are endless personalised Escape Rooms to be played.
The elementary stage of the learning process is so important because students are creating a foundation on top of which they will be building for years to come and the stronger the foundation, the easier they will find all future progression.
Why are games in the classroom so important? For one, kids simply learn better when they are having fun. The more enjoyable the activity is, the more engaged the students become and when they are engaged, their brains soak up information effortlessly. It is also important that students look forward to their classes to some degree. Boring classes mean bored students who get irritated and are easily distracted. Offering up a fun game as a reward for good behaviour and hard work makes the students, surprise, surprise, behave well and work hard.
I use Escape Room at the end of each unit of the book, as a fun way to review the material that we’ve been working on and as motivation for the students – ´During the next unit, the harder we work, the faster we will be able to solve the puzzles next month and the better chance our team will have of winning!`
Each session:
- Can be tailor-made to match what you’ve been teaching.
- Last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on how many puzzles you select.
- Be played individually, in pairs or in teams.
- Be played with students sat at their desks, more dynamically with the puzzles stuck up on the classroom walls, or through video conference platforms.
Contents:
