How to Gamify a “Boring” Classroom Lesson

Although using games in the classroom to keep students engaged is currently all the rage, it’s not new. Several decades ago I realized I could use competition and fun to help students enjoy practicing new grammar or vocabulary in my language classes. One funny incident comes to mind. My French 2 students laughed, and hollered encouragement to their teammates one day as they hurried to the board to manipulate elements in sentences I had written there.

Students shouted hints when they saw a mistake in subject/verb agreement or an incorrect possessive pronoun. It sounded like chaos, but it really wasn’t. I had complete control, which is what the principal saw after he threw open the door, thinking there was a fight in my class. The students froze when they saw his face. They were more surprised than he was.

After a brief pause in which I explained what we were doing, the students went back to their competition. Each student went to the board and changed an element in the sentence and made sure the grammar was correct after doing so. When he/she was finished, another student from the same side of the classroom ran to the board and did the same. They couldn’t leave the board, until I confirmed their sentence was correct. The winning team (side of the classroom) was the one in which everyone had completed a turn at the board.

The principal watched until the game was over, and then asked what students were practicing. I had a student volunteer explain the point of the game, and the grammar involved. He was impressed students were so enthused while completing what could have been a mind-numbing grammar exercise.

Almost any lesson can be turned into a simple, fun competition. I almost always used one side of the room against the other, moving a student if necessary to make the numbers even. I used this technique for years. Students loved the “game”, knowing full well I was conning them into doing vocabulary or grammar review. It was one of their favorite activities. And what did the winning team actually win? Bragging rights until the next time. No prizes, no extra points, just fun, and higher scores on the next test, of course.

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Budget Time and Reduce Stress

Teachers are usually very organized. They have to be in order to do the job. At home, they may budget their finances, but frequently fail to budget their time. They allow their teaching workload to fill all waking hours. There is no work life balance. In order to keep this from happening to me, I learned a simple way to budget my time.

Each year, I purchased a lesson plan book from a teacher supply store. I then laid out a plan for the year. I didn’t go into detail, but did organize the work I needed to cover in the months allotted. I wrote in holidays and state or district mandated testing. I also recorded the dates I intended to give major unit tests throughout the year.

Each Thursday during the school year, I created my detailed lesson plans for the coming week. I did this for each subject I taught (being a foreign language teacher, there were often several). Once technology and the school district where I worked gave us a website to use as a tool, I also began listing homework assignments on my website on Thursday. 

This allowed students the flexibility to do homework according to their busy schedules. It also removed the excuse of “forgetting” to write it down. The amount and quality of homework being completed increased. This reduced stress for all of us.

Doing my planning on Thursdays, not only helped my students, but freed up time for me on the weekend. The only thing I took home Fridays was essays. I graded them Sunday, in the early evening. The rest of the weekend was mine. Budget time wisely to avoid burn out.

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How to Stop Bullying and Teasing

One day during passing period between classes, I saw a girl walk in for the next class. She straightened each desk along the row as she walked toward her own on the other side of the room. At the time there was a male student standing next to me watching. In the past, I would have expected him to either ignore her or make a cutting remark. He did neither. Instead, he said, “Isn’t that cute? She can’t keep herself from putting the desks where they belong. She must be a Melancholy.”

He was right, of course, but how did he know? About a month earlier the school was conducting a series of tests. They thought it efficient to pull out those being tested by grade level. Since I taught German classes which were composed of students from all four high school grade levels, several students were missing from each class period for the entire week of testing. There was no way to conduct regular instruction, so I used the time to teach students something I thought would benefit them in school, at home and in the future.

I taught them the four personalities as described in the book Personality Plus, by Florence Littauer. I was able to lead students through the discovery of their own strengths and weaknesses. They were better able to understand what made them tick. Even more importantly, they developed not just a tolerance of the behavioral quirks of others, but an appreciation of them.

So when the boy standing near me saw another student taking the time to make the desks more orderly, he was charmed by her behavior. This was not an aberration. After teaching the four personalities and helping students realize how this knowledge could help them better understand themselves and deal with people around them, there was no more bullying or teasing in any of my classes.   

I highly recommend teachers read Personality Plus, CLICK HERE (ad), and find a way to fit the material into their lessons plans, no matter the subject they teach. Teachers will find this makes class management much easier. Students learn how to deal with their own strengths and weaknesses and how to better understand people they encounter in life.

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE. It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Photo Credit: Morguefile

Back to School Made Easy

Back to School Night can be a complete waste of time or an effective tool to help students succeed. You choose. The first several years of my teaching career, I did exactly what administration told us all to do at Back to School Night. I repeated everything I had included in the course outline letter I sent home with students the first week of school. It included the class procedures, expectations, rules, grading system, due dates, homework, etc. Then I realized rereading it aloud was a complete waste of time and insulting to parents. They had already read, signed and returned the letter to me.

Instead, I began to use Back to School Night to help students become more successful. I wrote the night’s agenda on the board each year. The first few items were the main topics from the letter, (so any administrator who entered the room would see that they had been covered). But the rest was what I wanted the parents to do to help their children learn.

1. Eat dinner together as a family. (I explain that all studies show students do better in school and in life if they had dinner with their family at least five nights each week while growing up.)  

2. Check homework. (I remind parents that I assign homework Monday through Thursday each week. It's posted on my website each Thursday for the upcoming week. It's never time consuming or “busy work”.)

3. Turn off electronics one hour before bedtime, and be sure students sleep the recommended number of hours for their age group, 8-10 hours for teenagers. (Studies show that electronic use before bed is detrimental to sleep quality. What is learned each day is moved from short term memory to long term memory during sleep.)

4. Make sure students have a nutritious breakfast each morning. (Students eating a full, healthy breakfast have more success in school than those who drink a fruit smoothie or eat a granola or power bar for breakfast. I also give parents ideas for how they can do this without it becoming oppressive.)

5. Give their children the book Seven Habits of Effective Teens by Sean Covey, son of Stephen Covey who wrote Seven Habits of Effective People. The book shows teenagers how they can get what they want in life, makes them happier and easier to get along with at home and at school, CLICK HERE (ad).

After I started using Back to School Night to influence the behavior of parents, to get them to do what would make their children happier, healthier, better rested and ready to learn, student success increased. It also had the side benefit of making me feel like going to Back to School Night was not a complete waste of time. 

You are reading from the blog, RoadtoFreeCollege.com, where we empower families with knowledge to navigate the path to higher education without the burden of excessive loans.

 

For more information, you’ll want my book, Free College, CLICK HERE . It teaches families how to help their kids become more successful in school, college, and life.

 

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, at no additional cost to you.

Image Credit: Morguefile