Is creating an escape game really for me?

Exploring the educational potential of escape games and imagining a scenario adapted to its context and its students, this is what was proposed by the duo of facilitators Julie Chandonnet and Julie Chamberland during the CréaCamp of 1^er last November in Montreal. This workshop was a real trigger for Audrey Lefebvre who tells us, in this article, how she reinvested her learning in the months that followed her experience at CréaCamp.

Thank you to Ms. Lefebvre for taking the time to write this inspiring testimony! And to all those who have had interesting post-CréaCamp experiences, do not hesitate to do the same.

By Audrey Lefebvre

Passionate about the closed-door formula for a long time in various centers, I was really sold on the idea of being able to allow students to use, in a fun and team way, their newly acquired knowledge in escape games. educational.

I had the chance to participate in the training of Julie's on 1^er November 2018 and I challenged myself to complete the game I started as a team during the CréaCamp in my community. Planning takes a lot of work but it is essential to define what we want to evaluate with our escape game. The biggest challenge is getting students to solve problems without asking questions.

As a librarian, I wondered how I could integrate library or research notions into children's learning and I was pleased to discover that the escape game lends itself very well. It took me about 8 hours of creation and three test groups (one from CP, one from teachers, one from students) for me to arrive at a version of my game adapted to my target clientele. But what a pleasure to see the enthusiasm of the students when they participate!

The feedback is all positive and the students are perfectly able to identify which concepts they have used to be able to solve the puzzles. You might think that a large group (20 people and more) would not manage to organize themselves, but I saw for myself that my fears were unfounded and that everyone ended up finding what they were looking for. Admittedly, it is not a tool for teaching new concepts, but it finds its place in the evaluation of learning side. And all this with a smile!

A testimony from one of the teachers who brought it to life in his class: "I appreciate that this allows my students to use, in a concrete situation, the mathematical notions that I teach them".