Thursday, November 1, 2012

Mr. Doran's Science Review Game

It's Mario Kart!


I decided to tweak my review game to incorporate elements from Mario Kart.  The game has persisted across generations of gamers since the early nineties.  So much about the series is recognizable to a typical eighth grade student.  Most of them still groan when I whisper blue sheeellllllll.

I created a list of questions to use with the answers.  This is a test on Matter, so there are questions about properties of matter, states of matter, gas laws, etc.

I built a race course on the whiteboard.  I built a practice course for my students because this is the first time they were playing the game.  I also built Rainbow Road. 


I printed, cut out, and magnetized some characters.  I went with the SNES lineup.
 
 

The Rules.  All teams were given a small whiteboard to write their answers on.  Every round, I would ask a question to the class.  They would answer the question on the whiteboard and show the answer when I called for it.  Correct answers moved their character two spaces forward on the game board.

I printed out "items" cards for them to collect when the passed the "?" squares.  These cards could be used on the other players.  They served a similar function as the items in the actual game.

First team to finish wins!  We had enough time for a single lap.

Results.  The students loved the game.  I liked that the game had less random chance and more skill and knowledge based strategies.  Players were rewarded for knowing their Science and for playing the game well.  I was able to get through about 30 Science related quesitons in a class period (43 minutes).  I look forward to adding elements to the game; like more items and more interesting maps. 

No comments:

Post a Comment