Challenging Escape from Climate Change: A learning Experience

Abstract

<p>The 3<sup>rd</sup> graders of the 18<sup>th</sup> Primary School of Rhodes, Greece during the school year 2018-2019, had the opportunity to increase their understanding of global climate change through sustainability themed escape-rooms in their school.</p><p>Teachers of this school had realized that escape rooms had become increasingly popular among pupils the last years. So they thought that giving them an educational twist, they can fit the needs of their pupils to foster teamwork, leadership, creative thinking, problem solving and communication in a way that is engaging for them.</p><p>The 3<sup>rd</sup> graders had interacted with peers from across Europe through an e- twining project called “Help! Save the Planet” which included many kinds of activities so to raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goal 13, the Climate Action.</p><p>As a consequence of this project, school escape rooms had emerged as a new type of inquiry based learning activity, under the promise of enhancing students’ learning through highly engaging experiences about Climate Change/Global Warming. These escape rooms covered the concepts: Green House Effect, Global Warming, Causes and Effects of Climate Change, Ways to Help.</p><p>The escape rooms’ games focused on pupils finding out facts and information and using these to solve puzzles, riddles, decode different ciphers as curious climate detectives and move forward.</p><p>Our escape rooms from climate change were run on April 22 -24, in recognition of Earth Day and as a part of our school’s commitment to sustainability and a healthier planet.</p><p>This challenging project was a great learning experience for all the school community, based on pupils’ and teachers’ cooperation, creating and innovating through the implementation of modern educational approaches and practices that promote 21<sup>st</sup> century skills.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>