Sophomore students in Mr. Nick Taylor and Mrs. Valerie Parasmo’s global studies class recently participated in a Global Studies Breakout, fashioned after the popular Escape Room experience. Students were highly engaged in extracting a series of global studies facts to discover clues in order to unlock a series of locks.

First, students used their knowledge of each other to figure out who their groupmates were. They then used their global studies expertise to solve riddles whose answers would provide solutions to open combination, word and directional locks. Clues were revealed using various technologies, including a black light and magic ink, tablets and a United Nations database.

To solve the riddles, students answered Regents-level questions and navigated supported text. They also utilized Gapminder, which helps students interpret more than 200 years of data collected by the United Nations. Upon the opening of each lock and box, the complexity of clue increased and further supported students in their quest to “breakout” of global studies.