One teacher's journey through
This summer I got the opportunity to teach an MSDE Breakout EDU class with two other amazing educators! Just in case you do not know what Breakout EDU is, it is a kit that allows teachers to create an immersive escape room gaming experience using content! It is seriously a fantastic tool that I cannot recommend enough! Anyway, my colleagues and I split the class into three parts. I took the first week and the other two took the second and third. We decided a great way to approach this class would be to not only highlight Breakout EDU, but also other skills/teaching techniques these teachers could bring into their classrooms. I decided this was a great opportunity to try and spread the word of gamification and Breakout EDU into other classrooms in my county! I decided the best way to utilize gamification was to show the importance of theme in a Breakout EDU game. Just like in gamification, the theme is what makes a Breakout EDU game come to life! I decided to pick a theme that almost anyone can relate to: Super Mario Brothers! I decided to create a whole Super Mario World with decorations and costumes; similar to the experience I try to give my middle school students! I have to give a shout out to my co-teacher Kent for being willing to help me out and dress up as Mario and facilitate the day with me! So Kent and I weren't just standing in a random trophy room dressed as Mario and Luigi, I bought blue tablecloths from the dollar store and Super Mario decals, and gold plastic plates from Amazon to create a more immersive experience. I used poster board paper from school to cover up the mystery boxes and I painted white question marks on them. Yellow Duct Tape was also a great tool in making the boxes! All and all it was pretty easy and cheap to create this thematic look, and an extra bonus is I know I can totally use this stuff with my middle school students this year! Once I completed the look, I created four stations with challenges and a Hyperdoc for my students to write their answers on. You can view the Hyperdoc I used here. Level One: Roll the dice and create a title for a Breakout EDU game for the standard and topics provided to you. Your titles must be the same number of words as what you roll with the dice! Level Two: Come up with a theme for a game with the standards provided. You need to pick at least two outside of your content area! Be creative! Level 3: Punch out a mystery box and see what items come out! Your challenge is to tie these items to your curriculum. Write a brief explanation for how you will make it work! Bonus Challenge: Earn extra XP if you write a new item on a slip of paper and answer one left by a classmate! Level Four: Use one of your ideas from a previous level and create a Pecha Kucha for your storyline and present it! You will have 10 minutes to complete this level! Once everyone finishes their levels, one person from your team will present your Pecha Kucha As my students finished their stations they were awarded gold coins worth 5 XP for their efforts. Mario and I picked the winners for each Level and awarded them bonus XP! You can view the item cards I made here. At the end of the day, students got to trade in their XP for prizes from our awesome swag table! Special thanks to Dave Burgess, Breakout EDU, Clue IQ and Peardeck for donating prizes!
Everyone really seemed to enjoy the day! My adult students got to see the importance of theme and push themselves to really think outside the box due to the challenges. Just like kids, my adult students also had a lot of fun with the gamified class! I hope this post helps you see that gamification doesn't necessarily need to be a huge year long game, or if you are doing a big year long game, it can be fun to add in a "mini-game" every once and awhile to help mix things up!
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Side Quests are exactly what they sound like; they are assignments students complete besides their course work. side quests allow students to voluntarily explore the content they are most interested in and create projects to show their knowledge. Students earn XP and items in return for their efforts. The bigger the challenge the side quest provides, the greater the rewards! Michael Matera introduced the idea of side quests to me in his blog. Now he has a whole section about them in his book, Explore Like a PIRATE, about different side quests he has his students complete. When I first read about side quests I was surprised that students would be willing to complete these amazing projects for absolutely zero credit for their grade. It honestly seemed a little too good to be true. I wondered if students would seriously be willing to do extra work for no credit, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that students not only are willing to do this, but many create absolutely amazing things to earn items and XP! Not all students in your class will complete side quests and that is okay! Focus on how rewarding it is for the students who do complete them! Anything that gets most of your students to spend their free time engaging in your content is a win! Make sure you differentiate the types of side quests you have posted, so you can try to reach as many students as possible! Try to have some lower level side quests like creating bumper stickers for students that want to be involved, but maybe don't have the time to build the whole city of Rome. At the same time, don't forget about students who are high achievers and want a challenge! Hide some secret side quests in your room or on the website for them to find. Have some side quests that require a lot of research and time such as creating a documentary or building an ancient city in Minecraft. Another important tip about side quests is that you should try to reward students quickly for their efforts. I really try to assess student work the day they turn in the side quest if it is possible, otherwise, I always make sure I give student rewards by the end of the week. Rewarding them quickly is important because it reinforces that you appreciate the student taking the time to create this extra project! It also helps if you give the reward to the student at the beginning of the class so other students can see what they earned. If it is a good item, I guarantee you will receive more side quests from other students in the class that week! Here are some pictures of some of my favorite physical side quests I've received! I've also received a lot of digital ones, but unfortunately I'm not able to share those on here. What do you guys like to have students do for side quests in your class? Share your ideas in the comment section! For my first post I thought I would start from the very beginning. The most common question I get asked when people find out that I gamify my class is how I got started. The summer after my first year of teaching, I was reflecting on my year. I successfully survived it, however, I had issues with classroom management. During my first year I quickly realized that students will not just sit quietly and listen to me lecture, and they would not always be interested in reading from the textbook and answering questions. I knew that I had to find a way to be better the next year and not just teach my students like I had been taught, because it really doesn't work. That is when a friend recommended I read Teach Like a PIRATE by Dave Burgess she said she thought it was exactly what I was looking for. I bought the Kindle version of this book, I read it in a day, and I never looked back! That book hit on everything on wanted to be as a teacher! I knew I found a kindred spirit, and even better there was a whole online community of like -minded educators at #TLAP. I had never participated in a Twitter chat before, but I figured I had nothing to lose. I jumped in and started talking to teachers from all over the country. During the chat, I found out about #sstlap (Social Studies Teach Like a Pirate). I started reading through this feed and stumbled upon a post by Michael Matera about Gamification. I was intrigued and clicked on his blog. This was the first time I read anything about Gamification in the classroom, and while I read his blog I immediately became inspired! This was exactly what I needed! I nervously tweeted at Michael and told him I loved his blog and asked if he had any advice about gamification for a newbie. Michael was the best and immediately offered to do a Google Hangout with me! (For the record, I will happily pay it forward and Google Hangout with anyone who has questions about Gamification!) We ended up talking for over an hour and he graciously answered every question I had about gamification! I am forever grateful to you Michael! Since then he wrote the book Explore like a PIRATE! If you want a practical field guide to gamification buy his book! Talking with Michael was the boost I needed to get started. During our conversation I wrote down notes about everything from Houses, to guilds, to items. After our conversation I immediately started brainstorming House names for my classes and created my first two items. I realized gamification would be a lot of work, but I was hoping it would be worth it.
Phase One During my first year I literally made things up as I went along. My number one tip if you are planning on starting a year long game don't worry about having literally every detail planned out before you get started. It is nearly impossible, and the key to making your game a success is flexibility and learning what works and what doesn't with your students. During my first year I made up items and badges as I went along. My class game was more of a side project for students, and I had a decent number of students participate, and they all enjoyed it, however, I knew I wanted to get more students involved and excited about the game the next year. I realized in order to do that I had to embed the game more deeply into my class. Phase Two During my third year teaching and my second year gamifying I knew I had to tie the game more closely to the fabric of my classroom. I started having weekly challenges for students to earn XP. I encouraged students to work on side quests if they finished assignments early. I displayed my leaderboard to the class once a week so they could see how their class was progressing. I realized about halfway through the year I didn't need to do this anymore because many students bookmarked my website so that they could constantly check the leaderboard. I always called my classes by their House names instead of Period 1, 2, etc. Doing this made even more students invested in the game. I was so pleased with the way students responded to this! I received a lot more side quests, I had students start coming up with item ideas for me, and I had students coming in during lunches to work on side quests to help their class win. On the end of the year survey I gave students the majority of them said they loved Game of Nobles and that it was their favorite part of my class. Phase Three After the successes of the last two years I continued to build upon my game. This year I added more complicated items such as "cursing" another House to make them lose XP for bad behavior. I started adding a lot more items that involved dice to increase suspense for rewards. I also added Battle Points (BP) to add even more advantages to challenges in my class. Out of all my years of gamification I had the most students participate by turning in side quests. I also loved that it was a really close game and it was not until the very end that a winner could be declared. Once again on my end of the year survey students said that Game of Nobles was their favorite part of my class. Phase Four After 4 years of teaching 7th grade I am switching to 8th grade. This will make the upcoming year particularly challenging because I will have students who played my game before. This summer I am working on a new game and I am working on adding new twists and turns to keep students excited! I am hoping to document and share my experiences with the creation of my new game on here to help teachers get started on their own gamification journeys! |
AuthorI am a passionate teacher from Maryland! I've been teaching social studies for four years, three of which were gamified. I've fully embraced the Teach Like a PIRATE/ Explore Like a PIRATE philosophy in my classroom, and have seen amazing results as far as engagement, excitement, and learning in my classroom. ArchivesCategories |