I post a lot about writing and recently, having posted on Twitter and Instagram about my ideas in the classroom, one Twitter user asked me: "Do you have a blog?" I realized that this website is not just me as a writer, but as a teacher as well. So, I'm going to start adding some posts from my teacher life. This first post is just a little bit about my classroom games these past two weeks. As an English teacher, my classes are studying pronouns and characterization. My first semester was a bit of a disaster when I attempted asynchronous units, so I decided to approach this semester with more of a sense of fun. I wanted to bring more gamification into my classroom, so I've been doing a bit of reading (Explore LIke a Pirate by Michael Matera and Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal to name a few) and here were some of the games we played in the past two weeks:
TIC-TAC-PRONOUN: students are divided into two teams and 9 tic-tac-toe boards are drawn on the board, each with a personal pronoun in each box. The students take turns creating sentences using nouns and verbs cards. They replace the nouns in the sentences with pronouns (2 in each sentence) and, using X or O (depending on team), they try to score three in a row. It was easy to create and my students LOVED it. They got really competitive with each other and even began to plan ahead, using critical thinking to determine what sentences would yield the biggest scores. I created a Google doc with the rules and scoring system. This is definitely one I'm keeping in my teacher bag!
| MEMORY BINGO: students play as individuals. There are two aspects to this game: memory cards and bingo boards. There are two types of cards - possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns. The former, I write in blue and the latter, in red. Students take turns trying to match blue and red cards (for example, their [the adjective] and theirs [the pronoun]). When they get a match, they must go to their bingo boards. Bingo spaces have three sentences on them. The first is the full sentences, such as "That book belongs to Sarah." The second has a blank for the adjective: "That is _ book." The third has a blank for the pronoun: "That is _." Students would put the words her and hers into these spaces, respectively. The great part of this game is that students have to pay constant attention because they are trying to memorize where each card is in order to win the game. |  |
 | DISNEY: students are divided into teams again. There is nothing better than a Disney movie to teach protagonist and antagonist. This was a very simple game. I chose twenty movies and printed out pairs of characters from each - one protagonist and one antagonist (for example, Aladdin and Jafar). I also printed out the title of each movie. Each team is then challenged to place the characters with the appropriate movie with protagonists on the left and antagonists on the right. The team that does it fastest wins the game. While the students knew most of the characters and the movies, they weren't sure of all of them, and they were allowed to use the internet to research. They had to decide if it was worth using up time to check the information. The timed challenge kept them on their toes and they loved physically manipulating the cards on the floor. |
Of course, all of these games are activities that require a mini-lesson beforehand. I've found, however, that my students pay attention more when they know they need to understand the information in order to play the games. They're having fun and thinking critically and I'm having fun with them. I look forward to going to "work" these days. As I create/find more games, I'll make more posts. Any and all ideas welcome!
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