
No-Prep End of Year Activities for Upper Elementary
The last few weeks of school can feel like a mix of excitement, exhaustion, and chaos. You’ve made it through testing, field trips, assemblies, and
Teachers and students alike love taking a break from worksheets and making learning fun with alternative activities like games or escape rooms. I began creating escape rooms when my own children complained about math being boring, now The Great Classroom Escape is my business!
Learning to create educational escape rooms has required a lot of trial and error on my part. I would love to save you some time and energy by sharing what I’ve learned!

The last few weeks of school can feel like a mix of excitement, exhaustion, and chaos. You’ve made it through testing, field trips, assemblies, and

Previous Next Ah, summer break—a time for relaxation, fun, and soaking up the sun. But wait! We don’t want those hard-earned math skills to fade

You overhear your students talking about how many days of school are left, but if you are like many teachers, you’ve been counting down the

Looking for a storyline for your next classroom escape room? Try these ten backstory ideas—from catching a criminal and escaping a haunted house to time travel, space missions, and seasonal adventures.

Learn how the Pigpen Cipher works and use it to add secret messages, collaboration, and story-driven fun to classroom escape rooms and puzzles.

Want to create a digital escape room but aren’t sure where to begin? Compare Google Forms, Boom Cards, and Twine, including the classroom-friendly advantages and limitations of each option.

The Need to Struggle is Real A few days ago, one of my children (who will remain nameless) was searching online for the answer to

Keep students focused during the Halloween season with low-prep digital math escape rooms for grades 1–6. See the skills, storylines, and classroom options for each grade.

Use response validation in Google Forms to make digital escape rooms self-checking while avoiding common capitalization, spacing, and answer-format problems.

Make Google Forms short-answer responses case-insensitive with a simple regular-expression pattern, so correct answers work whether students use uppercase or lowercase letters.

Explore alternatives to traditional tests that can reduce anxiety and reveal what students understand, including student-led explanations, projects, games, and classroom escape rooms.

I’m Thinking of a Number… Can you solve this week’s math brain teaser? There is only one correct solution to this problem. Share your answer