Breakout

In June I decided to revamp some of the ways my Library Science classes will cover different subjects. One of my new strategies became using a breakout box.

(For those that are unfamiliar with breakouts, you have a box with multiple locks of varying types  keeping it closed. Students are given a "story" and tasks/clues to lead to the combination of the locks. These tasks/clues should be instructional, academic, skill-based, and/or review in nature.)

Now when I went to the week-long DENSI conference, I attended a session on how to create your own breakout. One of the suggestions was to have a clue lead to another clue and then to the combination of a lock.

Well.....

Although I felt the 13 tasks were fairly straight-forward, there was one important thing I forgot to anticipate and take into account:

MY STUDENTS ALL TEND TO OVER-ANALYZE EVERYTHING.

That's right, they made it more difficult than it really was! For example, one clue said to "skip over just a bit and see what your rights are." The book the clue was found in was in the 347's of the Dewey Decimal System. Five books away on the same shelf is a book titled, What Are My Right?. The students were looking at shelves above, below, and two/three shelves away because "Due Process," court cases, and the judicial system all "deal with my rights."

Finally, I had to give them hints. "It's on the same shelf." Well, that led to them looking at almost every book EXCEPT the correct one. "Whose rights?" (answer: my rights. "Yes, now remember that.") Still, no luck. Finally, I just chuckled and told them they would all be smacking their own foreheads when they saw what the correct answer was....and they all did.

We haven't gotten through the entire box's clue. One class did get one extra lock opened compared to the other classes so I am giving them 30 minutes today to move forward. Hopefully they will have learned that I am not making this into rocket science...