Game On!

thingiverse

What better way to inspire learning than with a game? Add some dice or playing pieces to an activity and chances are, students will be more engaged. This lesson brings together social studies, 3D design, and games in one lesson to help students build both content knowledge and skills for the future. Standards CCSS Overview and Background This lesson benefits from not only being a delightful merger of several subjects, but also encourages the creativity of your students! Although the subject of study may be assigned, the final product (i.e. completed game) is open wide to interpretation. A traditional board game, like the mock-up example I provided, is only one of many options, but so too are card games using 3D printed tokens, a hexagon tile land building game, and many more. Objectives: Students will build design skills while also increasing historical knowledge through game design. Skills Learned (Standards): CCSS: WHST.6-8.1.C Lesson Plan and Activity Opening the lesson with a game related to a historical topic covered in class is a good way to hook students on the assignment. Assign topics to student teams based on a current or upcoming unit of study. Using the methods established in your class, students must research and document their findings. Presentation of these findings can occur at the end of the lesson in conjunction with the finished game, or can be presented mid-lesson, prior to beginning work on the game. Allow teams a class session or two to brainstorm their game idea, including creating some mock-ups of the board, cards, pieces, etc. This will make the design process go much more smoothly. If students lack design experience, set aside a session or two for work with Tinkercad, or the design program of your choice. Allowing students to test out some designs ahead of time will increase their ability to produce usable items to accompany their finished game. Once game production begins in ernest, it will be important to support student design problem solving and having the opportunity to test the game play mechanics as needed. Conclude the lesson with a "game day" in which students rotate from group to group as a student representative from each group explains the topic and design process and leads others through 5-10 minutes of playing the game. Displaying completed games in the library or a lobby display case is a fine way to demonstrate to the school community at large how technology and arts can be integrated with traditional academic subjects such as history. Duration of Lesson Two weeks Preparation This lesson is intended to occur within a larger lesson focusing on a period in history which may lend itself to a game of some kind. Rubric and Assessment Check out the suggested assessment guidelines I included among the Thing Files above aor the assessment rubric included in the document found in the Handouts & Assets section below for more ideas. This brief lesson on designing a board game from ReadWriteThink.org may come in handy when refining this lesson for your grade level: (http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson-docs/NovelBoardGameRubric.pdf) References Although impossible to provide references on the nearly infinite topics a middle or high school history class might cover, here is a little more information on the example game idea I have provided- Fort Humboldt State Historic Park (http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=665) Steam Donkey Engines (http://www.mendorailhistory.org/1_logging/steam_donkeys.htm)