Two SWF (Shockwave Flash) games that I started to run offline in my classroom in November 2013 have proved incredibly popular with my students - to the extent that I am able to use them as 'reward time' - one of them is based on use of Cartesian co-ordinates, and is called Game Over Gopher ; the other is an addition game that includes decimal addition, called Monster School Bus, or 'MonsterBus' for short.
Both of these games build important skills. Kids who would cover a piece of graph paper with doodles, and maybe do 5 minutes of work in an average lesson, stay 'in the game' , actively learning for the entire session. Extracting them from the activity is a major challenge - in a traditional classroom, a large part of management is trying to elicit engagement.
In my classroom, I have been having to develop a different skill set - strategies for eliciting disengagement, so that my students leave the room for break-time or a follow on lesson.
These games were developed at the College of Education, New Mexico State University.
Both of these games build important skills. Kids who would cover a piece of graph paper with doodles, and maybe do 5 minutes of work in an average lesson, stay 'in the game' , actively learning for the entire session. Extracting them from the activity is a major challenge - in a traditional classroom, a large part of management is trying to elicit engagement.
In my classroom, I have been having to develop a different skill set - strategies for eliciting disengagement, so that my students leave the room for break-time or a follow on lesson.
These games were developed at the College of Education, New Mexico State University.
No comments:
Post a Comment