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I love games. I always have. Even as an adult, I still play word games every morning before I get ready for work: crossword puzzles, word searches, Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Connections. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when I’m able to solve the puzzles. I like having a streak of wins, and I feel like it’s an important part of my routine. And it’s fun.

So I decided to bring that element of fun into my classroom this year. I’ve used games before, but I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted the whole class experience to be part of the game. Over the summer, I read Edrenaline Rush: Game-Changing Student Engagement Inspired by Theme Parks, Mud Runs, and Escape Rooms by John Meehan, and a light bulb went on. I realized that I desired a more immersive game experience in my room. I wanted class to BE the game, not just for students to play games.

So I began to plan this experience in earnest. I designed some vocabulary games, some stem words games, and started devising a system so that students could earn experience points (XP) and level up as the year went along. I designed badges to give students when they leveled up, and decided to put together swag bags for each level. Each successive level had a little more swag in the bag. Level 2 swag bags contained a couple of Life Savers, a piece of caramel candy, the Level 2 badge sticker, and one each of music passes and brain break passes. The music passes let students listen to music during independent work time. The brain break passes allow students to choose an activity from the brain break bin, and work on that activity for 10 minutes. The brain break bin contains activities such as sudoku, origami, sign language, coloring pages, yoga, and code puzzles.

Reaching Level 3 required more XP, and the swag bags contained more goodies. This time, along with the Life Savers, I included a package of animal crackers. There were two music passes, and two brain break passes, and of course the Level 3 badge sticker. Level 4 brought three each of music passes and brain break passes, along with a bag of Chex Mix or Gardetto’s snacks, and a Croc charm. No one has reached Level 5 yet, so I’m not entirely certain what those swag bags will contain. Definitely food, because there’s nothing a middle schooler likes more than food!

Not all students were thrilled about earning XP. Until, that is, other students began to level up, and they saw the swag bags. I keep a Google Sheets leaderboard posted on Schoology, so students can see how many XP they have, and I update it every afternoon. Students earn XP for coming to class on time, performing their class jobs without me having to remind them, scoring well on unit tests and standardized assessments, participating in spirit week, and other activities as well. Next year, I want to add even more ways for students to gain XP, and make sure some of them are not strictly academic. The leaderboard is color-coded based on the level the student has reached. Everyone started out white–when a student reaches Level 2, their row is changed to yellow. Level 3 is orange, and Level 4 is red. This makes it easy for everyone to see what level they’re on. One mistake I made this year was setting Level 2 at 20 XP. I should have set it lower, at probably 10 XP. Then, students would start leveling up sooner, and the game would be more exciting. That’s definitely something I will do next year.

Aside from the XP, there were lots of games in my class this year. There are some great platforms that teachers can use to make games for students to play: Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizalize, Blooket, and Gimkit, to name a few. It’s easy to take what would normally be a worksheet activity, and turn it into an online game. Most of these platforms now have an AI feature that makes creating games easier than ever. I even have students use these platforms to make their own games–when they get a new list of stem words, they choose the platform they like best and make a study game. Then, they can play the game to study, share the game with their friends if they choose to, and compete to see who can win. I have found this a much better way to have students study than just looking at the list for five minutes before the test. Scores are definitely better than in previous years.

One of my T-TESS goals this year was to increase student engagement through the use of gamification, and I would say I met that goal. No system is perfect, and I still have students who are not as engaged as they should be and as I would like them to be. But overall, gamifying the way I have has been a success.

So, next year, it’s still–game on.

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, you will know that I decided to use self-paced learning in my classroom last year. I really liked the idea, and I was so excited that my students would be able to learn this way. But alas. The reality is, I had mixed results. Many of the students struggled, in fact floundered. I wanted to give them an opportunity to wrestle with their learning, figure some things out on their own, because all the research says that this is the way our learning will be more powerful. I believed that, given the chance to have choice in their learning, students would be more eager to learn and would consequently be more successful. For some kids, this is just what they needed. For others, it was not–or, at least, they didn’t think so.

I remember one particular conversation. A student in my first period called me over. When I arrived at her seat, she held up the vocabulary menu (which has 12 different activities on it), and proclaimed, “I don’t get this.” So I asked her what activity she was having trouble with, so I could help her understand. Her answer was, “All of it.” I proceeded to tell her that if she could give me an idea of which activity was the problem, I could help her figure it out. She just kept waving the paper around and saying, “I don’t get this.” Keep in mind that we had done all these activities together already, so that students would understand how each one was to be done. Also, I had examples of each one hanging up in the classroom, in case anyone needed a refresher. I knew, without having to say it, that what she really wanted was for me to give her the answer, the one thing that was going to get her a passing grade on the assignment.

For years, I have believed that this is one of the biggest problems facing educators today. Instead of encouraging students to work out problems, and show their teachers what they have learned in ways other than a multiple choice test, school has taught them that there is only one right answer, and if they feign helplessness long enough, the teacher, in an act of self-preservation, will tell them what it is. This is the brick wall I kept crashing into, until I was battered and bloody.

I had students ask me why I didn’t just do what all the other teachers did–have them copy notes from a PowerPoint, then give a multiple choice quiz. When I asked them if this was an interesting way to learn, I got this answer every time: No, but it’s easy.

This is the stumbling block to what I was trying to do. I wanted them to think, to struggle with new concepts, and to present their learning in unique and interesting ways, but their idea of school is to regurgitate what the teacher gives them. This realization was very frustrating and disheartening to me.

But I’m stubborn. I refused to give in to the status quo. So I persisted. Some students never got on board with what I wanted to do, others stuck a toe in and only began to appreciate the process toward the end of the year, and a few trusted me enough to cannonball right in to the deep end. That’s the ones I want to focus on in this post. As for the rest…I’m working on that!

I had a project in mind for poetry that involved the life cycle of butterflies. I knew it was something that could really be powerful–if kids would buy in. My hope was that they would.

My campus curriculum facilitator ordered me six butterfly habitats. They came from a company called Insect Lore, which specializes in educational products for children. They have butterfly kits, ladybug kits, ant farms, and other products that bring science into the classroom. Since I wanted to focus on poetry, I felt that butterflies would be my best bet. With each habitat comes a voucher that can be redeemed for a cup of caterpillars whenever you are ready for them. Be warned, though–the company will not ship the caterpillars in weather that’s too cold. I ordered the caterpillars in April, and they were delivered to my house on April 19. It was a long weekend, with no school until the following Tuesday. I wanted to make sure that students were able to view the entire metamorphosis, so I made sure to take pictures each day of the caterpillars. I made a shared folder in Google Drive, so that students could see how the caterpillars changed over the course of time.

Caterpillars on the day they arrived at my house

When we all got to school on Tuesday, I showed the cups of caterpillars to the students in my PreAP classes. I explained that they would observe one particular cup each day, then post their observations in the shared folder. I would take pictures and post them as well. They oohed and aahed, watching the caterpillars creep around the cups. Then, I asked them to research what was happening to the caterpillars, and what they would become. Simultaneously, I had them partner up with another student, and they were given one type of poetry that they had to research–then, they would teach a lesson on that type of poetry to the rest of the class. So, they had two research projects going on at the same time.

Students engaged in observation daily at the beginning of class.

Every day, they observed, wrote, and researched. Poetry lessons were taught by the partner groups, and the examples they wrote of each type for their lessons were added to the shared folder. We started talking about metamorphosis–of the caterpillars, and of people, situations, relationships, etc. We discussed how the caterpillars were physically changing, but that didn’t mean everyone had to write only about those changes. I asked them to write four rough drafts of poems, so they would have something to work with. Then, they peer-reviewed each other’s work, and offered a suggestion to their partner about which poem they felt was the best. This is the one that moved forward in the writing process, so they began revising and editing, polishing their best poem.

I saw a lot of collaboration in this project, which is what I had been hoping for all year. I’ll be honest–this restored some of the faith I had lost during the year with students not buying in to what I was trying to do. It was a shot in the arm, convincing me that I’m on the right track and to keep pressing forward. So, I’ve spent all summer working out the details of the new plan, which I will share in another post. But, it made me feel better to know that students can be more in control of their own learning. And so I persevere.