Zones Escape Room

This escape room was co-facilitated by our favorite speech therapist, Ms. Sweet of Sweet Speech Therapy. This one was a very quick concept and set up- we grabbed the supplies and thought it through for about 15 min beforehand, and then one person set it up with the other went over the two topics with the group. We completed the activity with a group of eight 3rd-5th grade students. The goal was to introduce them to the concept of the 4 color zones, introduce the concept of expected and unexpected behaviors, and have them practice by placing examples of faces/emotions (from the Zones workbook) and behaviors (from teachers pay teachers based off the Social Thinking program) into the proper category.

We set up the gym with an area of "the river" (cones surrounding unrolled blue yoga mats) that they had to travel on "boats" (scooter boards) to collect social skills challenges, keys in a few easy screw open containers, and the face/emotions and behavior cards. The other area was the "plains" next to the river where they could go freely doing an animal walk of their choice (they chose mostly bear walks, frog jumps, or crawling) to collect scattered face/emotion and behavior cards. They could bring back only one at a time. We passed out keys to students who were placing items in the right category, we saw working as a team, or if they completed a social skills challenge. (Pink post it notes)

From left to right: plains for animal walks with scattered cards, river for scooter boards, and sorting emotions into category of "green zone"

below: social skills challenges (these were hidden in easy to open containers around the room, like a fake hollow book)

left: treasure chest with Lakeshore Learning Locks
right: thought bubbles and expected/ unexpected/ zones categories