This year I fully enjoyed our final several weeks as we winded up the year developing board games for our final review. The board games were fun, creative and an effective culminating student driven activity. My goals were to encourage students to work cooperatively, use technology, review full year content and complete a community service project all-in-one.
I gave out a board game rubric and the course standards for the year. The sophomores in my biology classes had the MA state standards and worked in groups of varying sizes to design a game to review for our final exam. I provided an excel template and purchased business cards in bulk. In addition, I purchased arts and crafts, dice, spinners… and other items of interest.
It was important to give time for the kids to strategize and develop a draft of the game. Once the groups shared their games ideas and strategies they could amend their plan could begin the formal design.
It was so fun to hear about the creative designs, strategies and content. Student cooperatively designed the game and rules while they worked individually on the review content. One leader in each group coordinated all the questions from each member and e-mailed me instructions for each card. All of the instructions for the cards included topic, logos, questions and answers and color codes. My husband was a trooper and printed out all of the cards from our home after I proofread the questions. The kids were thrilled when they received back the finished products.
The whole effort took about 3 weeks of student driven work in the classroom and in the computer rooms. I had a great time enjoying sharing ideas and helping to problem solve. Once they were completed, I had the boards laminated and all the game pieces and rules were organized. We all wished we had more time to play more of the games other groups had designed. I will try and paste some pictures of some of the game boards.
