Using games, and especially escape activities in the classroom is a great way to boost engagement which, in turn, boosts comprehension and retention. Have you tried my free Weather Vocabulary Escape Activity yet? If you have, I bet you're thinking of all of the ways you can create your own escape activity for your own classroom.

Here are Nine Easy Steps to creating a digital escape activity using Google Sites:

1. Create a Google Site.

2. Choose a theme. It can be related to the topic you want to review , but often students are more engaged if the theme is funny or weird. Here are some ideas:

   • zombies, tornadoes, bomb, pandemic, or some other life threatening situation

   • students are locked in a basement, classroom, cave, etc and must find their way out

   • evil professor has stolen something (algae that the fish in the pond need to eat, all of the seismographs, the ingredients for a chemical formula, friction)

   • escaped convict left clues to his lair

   • rival football team has broken into locker room and stole the mascot, shoulder pads, playbook

   • principal is missing

   • scripts for the school play have been stolen

3. On the banner at the top of your Google Site, click "Change Image" and upload a banner that fits your theme. The banner size is 800x125 pixels. If you want an animated banner, here's how to make one.

4. Choose a name for your escape activity and write it where I have written "Digital Escape Template" in the top left corner with the name you chose. The link that Google creates when you publish your site will be that name.

5. Instead of this text box, create something introducing your escape activity. You can use a simple paragraph or two explaining the problem, or you can be fancier and create a video.

6. Add images related to your theme. For example, if your theme is motion, use photos of cars, planes, trains, bicycles. Images can be resized and rearranged.

7. Click on each image. Choose the Insert Link option to link each image to a clue. Solving each puzzle should give some reward - part of a password to the Google Form, perhaps? (I've linked each of these images to a part of the solution) Some suggestions for clues:

   • Jigsawplanet.com

   • Magic pixel reveal digital worksheets

   • Interactive Google Slides

   • a deck of Boom cards

   • vocabulary worksheets

   • Task cards

   • hyperdoc worksheets

   • crossword puzzles

   • mazes that spell out a clue when you solve them

   • coordinate graphing that spells out a clue when you solve it

   • Rebus puzzles

   • codes (Morse, Braille, alphabet cipher, binary, ASL, and a billion more)

   • clue hidden in word search puzzle

8. Create a Google Form on which students must enter the password they've learned in order to succeed. See the Google Form at the bottom of this page to see what that looks like. To learn how to force passwords on Google forms, click here.

9. When you are done, click "Publish" in the upper right corner. Click the link button on the top panel to obtain the URL to give students to complete the activity.