More important than Spanish?

My school is currently getting ready to go our NEASC accreditation self-study, so we have all been thinking about how we incorporate our 21st Century Learning Expectations in to our curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Our next step is to ensure that we are purposefully teaching these things in our classrooms. So... how to do that? One easy (and fun!) way is using Breakout Edu activities.

I have done a few Breakout Edu activities from Martina Bex (Carmina (after this favorite unit), Cuba o casa after reading the book Casa Dividida, and Escape con abuela) and they all went very well. Students really liked them and I love to watch them work together and see those light bulbs light up! All three of those are regular Breakouts with the physical locks and the lockbox and I highly recommend them both!

But, this past Friday, my Spanish 2 class and my AP class did a Digital Breakout (free here, thanks Nelly!), made by Nelly Hughes and it was even better! This Breakout was perfect for a Friday Fun Day activity. I broke the classes up in to groups of 4-5 students and they had to work together in small groups to solve the problems. 

The most important thing for me to do before the Breakout activity is to explain why we are doing this and what this activity should look like (this is the teaching of those 21st CLE). In order to do this, I have put together a rubric that uses four of my school's School Wide Rubric strands (click here to see it):

• Collaboration and Cooperation
• Problem Solving
• Perseverance and Self-Advocacy
• Transfer of Knowledge

We go over the rubric before they start and I explain (teach) what these things look like in the Exemplary column. The language in the rubric is general, so I explain in simplified terms. I told them that these things might be more important than Spanish (gasp! ;) ). I also emphasize that they might not solve all the puzzles and that is okay, as long as they are working in the "Exemplary" or "Accomplished" columns! After doing that, I release them to get to work.

I was so impressed with my students during this Breakout. They were mostly "Exemplary".  I would expect that from my AP students, but I was particularly impressed with my non-honors Spanish 2 students; they were amazing working together! So many of them said that they loved it and definitely want to do it again.

I hope to find (or maybe create this summer) some more Digital Breakouts and do this once a month next year. 

Also, if you haven't started following Nelly's store on TPT, I recommend it!

And, Arianne Dowd has just started a TPT store as well! She has free Breakout for Ladrón que roba a ladrón that I hope to do next year. Also, you can search "Breakout" on her site and find some others!

Want to learn more or find other ones? Check out this post from Fluency Matters.