BreakoutEDU is a super fun, engaging way to teach or review content with your students. If you've never heard of it, let me explain... I'm sure you know what an escape room is, right? Someone locks you in a room for an hour and you solve a series of puzzles to get out of the room. Well, a BreakoutEDU box is exactly the same idea, except instead of breaking out of a room, you have to break INTO a box!
The company BreakoutEDU sells official boxes. It's $150 for one box and a one year subscription to the site. The Breakout site includes over 800 premade lessons and activites that you can use with your students. I love the idea behind BreakoutEDU, but unfortunately I cannot afford to buy 4-6 boxes that I would need per class, nor the $50 a year renewal fees to maintain access to the site. Teachers are poor! So what to do, what to do? Make my own, of course!
Making my own boxes was pretty simple (and WAY more cost effective!). Off to Amazon I went, searching for the following items:
I also found gold locks with keys and combo locks at the Dollar Tree... you can find quite a variety of different types of locks with a little searching! I was able to make 4 boxes for about $100, which is pretty great. I'd recommend that you have a max of 6-8 kids per box, so depending on the size of your classes and how you integrate them (as a center or as whole group), you'll need to figure out how many boxes you'll need to work for yourself. Lock Tips
I made some mistakes that ended in locks being cut off with bolt cutters... don't make the same dumb mistakes I did!
BreakoutEDU Lessons
Now, where to find the lessons? I highly recommend that you start by using a pre-made box/lesson. To build your own lesson takes a lot of time and planning. Using a pre-made box will also help you understand the mechanics of how the boxes work before you attempt to build your own!
There are numerous Facebook groups for Breakout Boxes by searching. There are ones for Librarians, English Teachers, Elementary teachers, even Breakout Espanol! Here's a sample of a FEW of the groups that are available... there are many more than what you see here!
If you would decide you want to plan your own, I recommend using this planning guide to help you backwards map your locks and clues... download it here:
Other Resources
There are lots of fun resources out there for BreakoutEDU Clues... check out this list from BreakoutEDU. Don't forget to verify that all the links are unblocked for students on your network... student devices may be filtered and block the content.
SO - what BreakoutEDU boxes will you do with YOUR students? What successes (and failures!) have you had? Drop a comment below and let me know! I'll update this blog soon with pictures from a BreakoutEDU Box I did earlier this year with my 8th grade students in February. It was an amazing success!
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There has been a lot of discussion about "Ditching Dewey" (which is a term I hate, we still use Dewey in the library!!) recently among librarians. There are articles on both sides for and against genrefication. I debated long and hard about whether or not I should genre-fy my fiction collection. Ultimately the decision came down to doing what I believe to be best for kids... so I chose to go for it. The reason I decided to reorganize the fiction collection is simple - the number of students who came to the library and would ask for books by genre was staggering. It was a constant stream of "Where are your science fiction books?", "Do you have any fantasy books?", "I want to read about dogs... do you have any stories about dogs?", etc. When I replied that they could search using our online catalog, I was often met with resistance. Students were not interested in taking the time to search, and the overwhelming majority preferred to just browse the shelves for what catches their eye. I also knew that I had great titles that were just lost in the shelves... for example, Doll Bones by Holly Black is a REALLY creepy horror book, but my students never checked it out because it wasn't with Mary Downing Hahn or R.L. Stine. I always LOVE selling books to kids, but most times I am teaching a class when they come down to check out books, so I'm not always available to help them find what they are looking for. I knew it was time for a major overhaul... but WHERE to begin? First, I checked with another fabulous librarian in my county, who directed me to this blog post that she used to help her get started. I followed most of the same protocols listed in the blog. Phase One: Assign Genres.The first portion of the project was completely behind the scenes. I ran a report within Destiny to give me a .CSV file of all of the fiction titles in the collection. I then sorted them alphabetically by author and uploaded them to Google Sheets. After working with another librarian and my supervisor to decide on categories for genres, we came up with the following system-wide list:
I did weed the collection as I went, though it was fairly well-weeded before I began and I did not pull many books from it... perhaps another 20-30 books total came out. Most were old paperbacks that I ordered hardbacks for if the circulation warranted it. I did not choose to make a classics section, as I felt that those books, collected together in one place, would never circulate. However, if I could "hide" them in other sections they would be more likely to circulate. I also did not choose to create an LGBTQ+ section for two reasons... the first was because those books, authors, and characters are found across all genres. Normalizing LBGTQ+ relationships is a priority in my library so that all students feel safe and welcome. The second reason was to protect students who may be exploring or questioning their gender and/or sexuality; if they are not out to family, friends, teachers, or other people, they would probably not want to be "seen" browsing that section or reading a book with a rainbow flag sticker. For more of my thoughts on LGBTQ+ books and their place in the library, check out this blog post! So, how to assign genres? I manually added a genre to the books by searching sources such as Follett Titlewave, WorldCat, and crowd-sourced sites like GoodReads. You can view my spreadsheet HERE if you would like; feel free to use the genres I have assigned to my books for your own collection if it somehow helps you! If you are stuck on a book because you believe it belongs in two or more genres, you have a couple of options:
You'll also need to attend to series to make sure they all end up in the same location, particularly series like the 39 Clues books. Because they are all written by different authors, they have the ability to end up accidentally in different genres. Once the books were all assigned a genre, I sorted the spreadsheet and ordered colored spine label stickers from Demco based on the results of the spreadsheet. Here are the genres and the colors I settled on: It it worth noting that I already had already used blue for my Everybody books, yellow for Foreign Language, purple for Graphic Novels, and copper for Biographies prior to beginning this project. I worked on this phase of the project for approximately 6 months off and on. I was not in a huge rush to complete it because I was getting all new shelving, so I wasn't planning on moving the entire collection and then moving it again for new shelves. I finished this part of the project just after Thanksgiving Break this year. Phase Two: STICKER ALL THE BOOKS!The 2nd phase of the project was to sticker all the books. It involved an army of student volunteers who helped me locate and sticker every book in our fiction collection. This was not a small task... it was lengthy and tedious. I had to remind myself many times that what we were doing was what's best for kids. Each book that we stickered was colored in on our spreadsheet to notate that a copy had been stickered. You may notice that some books are still white on the sheet - that means they have not yet been returned to the library since I genrefied the collection in late December/early January. I completed this project in the middle of the school year; the books were not all on the shelves when I completed the process. Once the majority of the books were done, the shelves were a rainbow parade of spine stickers: This phase took approximately one school week (5 days) to complete with the help of several student volunteers. Even now, 3 months later, I am still stickering books that were lost or overdue as they come back. This part of the project won't be done until after the students leave! Phase Three: Sorting, Adding Copy Categories and Reorganizing / Rearranging the CollectionThe final phase in the project was to sort the books, add copy categories and rearrange the collection. Sorting the books was the scariest part of the process to me. It really felt like the point of no return. It took 4 student volunteers and myself less than 45 minutes to unload and sort the entire fiction collection: We completed the sorting in the last hour of the day before winter break. I was so nervous about leaving it over break - not because I was worried about what would happen to the books, but because of the amount of work awaiting me when I returned from winter break. All I could think was "WHAT HAVE I DONE?!" I mean seriously... look at the empty shelves!! I had to close down book circulation for three days to complete the next job. I did this over the three days coming back from winter break, with permission and full support of my administration and staff. Have I mentioned that I work with the best staff ever? Because I do. #truestory. On the first day back after break, I added the Category and Sublocation in Destiny. This allows the students to see it in the search results! This was achieved by going to the Catalog Tab > Update Copies (on the left) > Individual Update Tab > Sublocation and Category to match the genre I was preparing. Then simply scan each book... See pic below for clarification. This took approximately 4 hours to scan the entire fiction collection, stopping to switch Sublocations and Categories for the 11 genres that we had chosen. After this was finished, a search in Destiny looked like this: The final step was one of the hardest parts... re-shelving the entire collection. It took a solid 2.5 days with help from an amazing parent volunteer to get it finished. Even though I had counted and recounted shelves and analyzed the number of books per genre, I ended up moving some books after they had been shelved to a different part of the library. We also ended up changing a sticker color because two of the stickers were too similar to one another and they were right next to each other on the shelves; this would have resulted in too much interfiling. It probably would have only taken two days if not for that. But BEHOLD... the results of a LOT of hard work!! Phase Four: THE RESULTSWe reopened book circulation to all students and staff on Monday, January 7th. The results were immediate! Kids were excited to see the library reorganization. Some comments I heard were:
In addition to the student comments, the hard data shows the truth. From January 7th to March 13th, we were in school for 42 days. Fiction collection book circulation increased by 34.3% during those 42 days as compared to the previous 42 days of school. It WORKED!!!!! The students and staff loved the reorganization. And while it was a LOT of work, and it's not completely done, it was 100% worth it. And because I work with the BEST STAFF EVER, they threw a ribbon-cutting ceremony, complete with student speakers and refreshments! It was an unforgettable moment in my career; never have I felt so supported and appreciated as I did in that moment. It was PERFECT! |
About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
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