Thank you to other game makers
I am awed and grateful to so many other educational game makers. These few have stood out as exceptional in my classroom over the years.
-
Guess, Digit, Place
“I’ll think of a 3-digit number and you guys have to guess my number. None of the digits are the same as each other. When you make a Guess, I’ll write it down, then tell you if any of the Digits in your number are also in my secret number, and if so if they are in the correct Place.”
That’s it. Make columns on the board labeled G, D, and P. The kids usually take between 5 and 15 guesses to figure out my number. Always, there are kids who are scribbling numbers, kids who are standing up, kids who are using their fingers (I don’t know why), and kids yelling out.
Space it out. Only do a couple of games a week for a few weeks. It keeps them hungry. After a few times, if the kids are still excited by it, move on to 4-digit numbers. Heh heh heh.
I don’t know who invented this. I learned it my first day of Supervised Field Work, as Pico Fermi Bagels. I know Marilyn Burns has referenced it. I’ve also used it for interviewing 5th graders who were applying to our middle schools, to get a sense of how they thought.
-
Flip, Skip and Cut-a-Card
Bob Giles, of Bank Street College, taught us these two activities as part of our regular coursework and the kids like them every single year since. Every.
Flip, Skip
Take 10 index cards, marked 1-10. Arrange them in such a way that when you turn them over in this pattern, they turn up in order:
Flip: the top card and place it on the desk: 1
Skip: put the next card at the bottom of the deck
Flip: the new top card and place it on the desk: 2
Skip: repeat until all 10 cards are on the desk, having flipped over in order.
Cut-a-Card
“Using an index card and scissors, recreate this shape. When you have it, show me and glue it down on the colored paper.”
-
Password
Of course, I’ve made countless bingo games and Jeopardy games, but I also like the simplicity of Password. This game has categorizing (what word is similar to the one they just tried?), the need to pay close attention, collaboration, urgency. And, you can use any content words, or just generally build vocabulary.
Plus, password is physical and you can play up the drama: Use a shadowy whisper for ‘And the password is . . . . . . . . . . ____.”
-
Breadbox / Twenty Questions
The kids don’t know what a breadbox is, so my quaint 1960s way of introducing 20 Questions quickly turned it into Breadbox to them.
I try to play this as often as they’ll let me. It’s shockingly important and interesting for them to learn to categorize and think constructively.
We began playing this a little at a time, but the kids kept getting more and more into it. The website measures the time you take to solve the puzzle each day, so we could easily see a progression from the first play of about 20 minutes (of sustained interest, which is cool!) to a competitive time of 1 minute 14 seconds, in both years we did this in homeroom. Pretty impressive. They are very proud of themselves. I am very proud of them. It’s a very complicated assembly of things to keep in mind as a young adolescent.
-
Discovery: A Colonies Simulation
In this simulation, created by Interaction Publishers, the kids form immigrant groups traveling to the New World from England in the early 1600s. They must choose their supplies and other specifics and are then left to face multiple dice challenges for weather, disease, famine/bounty, friendly or unfriendly interactions with the indigenous folk, and other hazards/benefits. It is very detailed and time-consuming, but I loved it. The kids really got into their decisions and land grabs. I’d do it again after revising the math a bit simpler for everyday use. Plus, it would be nice if we as a class wrote a Land Acknowledgement for our local Native American people.
-
Cardio-Pulmonary System Game
I found this simple track board game online (it’s in several places and I don’t know who should be cited) and made two copies for my classes. The kids have to move Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Nutrition, and Waste tokens from the body’s cells, through to the lungs and kidneys, and back again. It’s very simple, but the kids loved it. They played as much as I would let them.
This is another of those games that helps the kids absorb the content without the anxiety of reading or answering worksheets. If you keep looking at a drawing of a body and discussing the placement of nutrients, oxygen, and more, your use of the vocabulary and concepts just melds with the learning of the game.
Another homage, for the GEMS supplemental units, especially The Real Reason for Seasons, Aquatic Habitats, Cabbages and Chemistry, Life Through Time, River Cutters, and Environmental Detectives.
This last is a well-constructed simulation of the Gray Area’s natural and human-created challenges. The kids take on roles of various townspeople and business owners, to discuss the best way to manage the area for the benefit of all, including the non-humans. I’ve used this with Who Really Killed Cock Robin?, a novel by Jean Craighead George, about a town with similar issues.
Each November, as a way of celebrating Thanksgiving, we played the Oxfam Hunger Banquet simulation at Ethical Culture Society in Teaneck.
The participants take on roles representing people from many different circumstances from around the world. We each read about the family and job situation of the person, and the possible future prospects for that person.
We also ate food that represented the hunger situation of the people we were representing: The people with the highest wealth got orange juice and bagels with cream cheese, the poorest ate saltines and water, and the in-betweens had cheerios with milk. It’s an extremely powerful empathy-builder. Every single year, the bagel kids share with the saltine kids. Every single year.
-
Factor Game and Product Game
This entry is actually just homage to Marilyn Burns, who taught me more about elementary and middle school math than I ever knew I hadn’t known. These two games are engaging, simple to learn and challenging to master, and completely NAIL the content. In whatever form, with paper clips or digitally, the kids want to play this over and over again, each time further cementing their understanding of multiplication and division concepts. Amazing game design.
Another good quick math game is Mr Nussbaum’s Order of Operations Game. Even though it is exactly the same as what I ask them to do on paper at which they balk, they’ll play this game for ever.