On Thursday 25th August and Friday 26th August, students from our Year 8 English and History classes participated in a Renaissance and Shakespeare themed Escape Room Challenge in the Narranda Learning Centre. At the beginning of the day, students were introduced to the idea of creating an escape room, the parameters they had to work within and their time frame. After having been given these rules, students were given full creative licence over the escape room itself. 

Throughout the day many learning opportunities were experienced, some of which were transferable skills, those that will be useful throughout life. Collaboration problem solving, working to a deadline and working within set parameters were some of the many. The two days were fun for all students, also acting as an escape from day to day classes.

In History and English students had learnt about key ideologies of The Renaissance and experienced a taste tester of various Shakespearean plays and villains, all of which were the themes of the task. This further emphasised and enforced their knowledge and understanding of the topics. The PBL had all participants use their individual skills collaboratively to complete the task, with all seven groups designing rooms incorporating varying themes and tasks. 

After the hard work of creating the escape room, the participants got to enjoy testing their end product on another class as students worked hard to escape the rooms before the time ran up.

Overall, this task was very challenging yet enjoyable for the History and English students involved. This PBL experience taught the boys involved how to use their creativity and prior knowledge of the subjects to work with their team to come up with their themed escape room.

by Yr 8 students Harrison Macdonald, Oliver Hasham and Daniel Duggan