Creating board games is not boring!

After preparing and teaching my direct instruction lesson, my inquiry lesson, and my cooperative learning lesson, I finally saw how each type of instruction is implemented. Through it all, direct instruction is teacher-centered and inquiry and cooperative learning are both student-centered. This experience has showed me that my favorite type of lesson is cooperative learning. I find this lesson to be the most enjoyable for the students as well as the most rewarding for the teacher. The students get to take control of their own job, make something creative, and interact with peers. The teacher is able to see the students develop social skills and put together all of the knowledge they have learned through the unit. Student-centered learning makes students participate in collaborative work, direct their own learning, and understand the use of self and group assessment forms.

At the start of the lesson, the mysterious leaders of the American Revolution during the last lesson were reviewed. Four pictures were displayed of each of the individuals that the detectives discovered. The students explained the characteristics of each person and what they did to entitle them an important role in the revolution. It is important to review this lesson to make sure the students have an understanding of the four individuals before moving onto the next task.

I learned that before introducing the students to the idea of creating board games, cooperation and teamwork needed to be addressed. Before teaching the fifth graders, I did not know that it is essential to review these concepts with the students. Reviewing both cooperation and teamwork reminds them of what rules and ideas they need to follow as they create their board games. When bringing up cooperation, I decided the easiest way for the students to understand this concept is by relating it to a real-world situation. First, the students are asked what cooperation means to get them thinking and their ideas flowing. I started to explain that on the basketball court every player has an assigned task. If one person does not follow through with the specific role of his or her position, the other team could score a basket or steal the ball. I wanted the students to grasp the idea that every person counts. If one person is not doing what he or she is supposed to, the whole team does not accomplish the task. Relating this idea back to social studies, every soldier in a troop does the job he or she is told to fulfill with no question. If a soldier does not fire when told, that is one less potential kill on the opponent. If a soldier marches in a different direction, it is one less person to fight for freedom. The idea is reinforced to the students before they are given roles. If one person does not carry out his or her assigned role, he or she is letting down the whole group. The board game cannot be completed in the time period without everyone contributing in the process.

When creating my PowerPoint presentation, I realized that I cannot just give the students roles and not explain what they are entitled to do. The positions the students could receive are a group leader, data collector, encourager, materials manager, or timekeeper. A group leader makes sure all members stay on track and leads his or her peers in discussions. This does not mean the students take over the conversations, but rather guide the students to stay on task and come to conclusions on the design of the board game. In this case, the data collector finds or creates questions on the people, battles, documents, and events that took place during the American Revolution. This person records the questions on the playing cards and the answers on a separate piece of paper. All of the members in the group are to agree on the questions being made for the game before writing them out. Having everyone in the group look at the questions will provide a boarder view on whether the questions are the right level of difficulty and appropriate for their peers.

The encourager keeps a positive environment and ensures everyone is working to complete the board game. This person is not to boss peers around if they are not fully focused. The student is to instead give his or her classmates compliments on the task at hand. Collecting and returning all markers and supplies to the teacher is the materials manager of the group. This minimizes the amount of students swarming the teacher and helps the students practice using their organizational skills. The timekeeper watches the clock and gives frequent reminders of how much time is left to design the board game. This person is reliable for getting the group to finish on time. He or she is not to constantly tell the group every thirty seconds, but rather every five minutes or so. The students have to understand at the beginning that the role they receive does not mean they only do that specific task. For example, the materials manager does not only pass out and return materials to the teacher. This person is to help the data collector find questions to write on the playing cards for the board game. The roles were assigned to the students at random and each students name was labeled with a different color tab to indicate his or her role for the lesson.

Before the students began the task, they were informed of the evaluation process and how it works. At the end of the lesson, the students were to evaluate themselves and their group as a whole through a group evaluation form. I think having students fill these out is helpful in having them reflect on what they could have done better, how well they participated and stayed on track, etc. When students actually think about their behaviors, they realize what should be changed and put into effect the next time a cooperative task is given. As stated, "...teachers who fail to include these requirements report far more difficulties with their students and their group activities, and far less student academic achievement gains than do teachers who meet them"(Stahl, 1994, p.3). The students think that they can get away with any behavior when they are not being evaluated. These classrooms face larger amounts of issues regarding students working with one another on tasks. The students do not follow their roles, the directions, or complete their work on time creating lower achievements. The students are not focused on what they are learning, but rather their social life. Myself, the teacher, also explained to the students that I would be walking around and observing the students as they worked in their groups on the board games.I would be watching and listening to see who listens to their peers ideas, contributes ideas, is respectful, fulfills his/her role, and more. The students know that the teacher is looking for certain behaviors, contributions, and teamwork. This has them continuously working, checking on one another, completing their specific task, focusing and bringing all of their thoughts together. If the teacher were to just sit at his or her desk, the students would fool around, work insufficiently, and not create quality products. Observations and evaluations create a classroom filled with a productive, collaborative learning environment. 

I modeled an example game board and explained the process of its creation.

I went through the rubric for the students to see the different components they needed to be sure to incorporate. The students were being graded on their design and creativity, questions, directions, content, and the difficulty of the content. The students were to have at least six questions and the content was to be at an appropriate level for there classmates to answer. This means, the questions on the American Revolution were not to be too easy or too difficult. The board was to have illustrations representing specific ideas of the American Revolution, more geared towards the questions being asked. Lastly, the students needed to create rules on their board and on each playing card. For example, a playing card might say move ahead four spaces if it is answered correctly. If a rubric is not provided, the students might think that they are only being graded based on how well they perform their specific role and work as a team. This rubric shows the students that the quality of the board game is just as important.

The groups of students were given twenty-five minutes to create and complete their board games. Most of the students were very excited and enthusiastic about the process. As I walked around observing the students, I noticed that the groups who were having trouble were the ones that not everyone was participating or following their role in. For example, one boy was the timekeeper in his group and was very defiant in only keeping track of the time. He would not help his peers create questions or draw illustrations. This put extra work on another student in the group, making him have to complete more work in the same amount of time. As written, "…each must be held individually responsible and accountable for doing his or her own share of the work and for learning what has been targeted to be learned" (Stahl, 1994, p.3). Individual accountability is one of the four components of cooperative learning. The student was carrying out his role of a timekeeper, but did not put effort into any of the work targeted to the American Revolution. The timekeeper is to keep the students on track while they construct the board game and meet the criteria. This was a common problem I observed over several groups. Another conflict I observed was one student not accepting any other group members' ideas. He contributed every last idea he had and would write and draw on the board without consulting his group. The student was very creative in adding bridges and strategizing rules on the board in a pattern that led the player back to the beginning. In this case, the student took over too many roles and did not let everyone have an equal opportunity to contribute. As stated, "…the student must not feel penalized academically by being placed in a particular group" (Stahl, 1994, p.2). All of the students in this group felt this way because the student was very straight forward with how he wanted everything to look and be completed. Students not carrying out their role or carrying out too many roles both hinder the success of the group.

The cooperative learning lesson is to include positive interdependence, individual accountability, group processing, and social skills. For positive interdependence, "Essentially, tasks are structured so that students must depend upon one another for their personal, teammates', and group's success in completing the assigned tasks and mastering the targeted content and skills" (Stahl, 1994, p.2). The students must all carry out their individual role. A student's individual accomplishments are also his or her group's. If someone does not follow through with the assigned role given to him or her, the team will be hindered in both completion and criteria understood. As mentioned above, the major development of the cooperative learning style is to have everyone work individually and as a group at the same time.

Group processing requires students to complete two separate forms evaluating themselves and their classmates. Stated above, the students are to reflect on how well their group worked together and improvements to be made on themselves as well as their group. More specifically, "Students spend time after the group tasks have been completed to systematically reflect upon how they worked together as a team in such areas as (a) how well they achieved their group goals, (b) how they helped each other comprehend the content, resources, and task procedures, (c) how they used positive behaviors and attitudes to enable each individual and the entire group as a group to be successful, and (d) what they need to do next time to make their groups even more successful" (Stahl, 1994, p.3). Social skills involve the communication of ideas from student to student. This can be relying content, questions, illustrations, and directions to one another. The students should be facing one another and making eye-to-eye contact as they rely academic information. The assignment of an encourager ensures that constructive criticism, clarification, and conflict-management are being developed in every group. Cooperative learning cannot be complete without each component being present.  

It is time to have the students present when they finish creating their board games. The students are to explain the design of their board, explain why they chose the questions they chose, and the rules of the game. Everyone is to speak and thoroughly explain the game in detail so the listeners' have a full understanding of the board when they go to the game. I think it is important for each group to be exposed to their classmates' creative designs and ideas of what to incorporate specifically from the American Revolution. All of the students are able to see different perspectives on the project other than their own. At the end of this lesson, it is time for the students to independently reflect. The students are thinking and writing about their experiences creating the board game. This includes being responsible for a specific role, working collaboratively with classmates, sharing ideas, catering the game to the American Revolution, and finishing in a certain amount of time. A rubric is provided for this journal entry as well. The students are evaluated on their discussion of at least three cooperative roles describing what they would do again and what they would change. The length of the response has to be at least six sentences, including at least two specific details or examples from the experience. A discussion of at least two new ideas learned from the questions written on the American Revolution. The students are also to have at least two sentences of their own opinion on how participating in the activity was for them. Not only do the students benefit from this reflection, but the teacher does as well. The teacher is able to see if the students liked the activity or not. He or she will know whether to change it for the next year or to improve upon this one. The teacher can see which cooperative roles may need to be practiced more often. He or she can assign different roles to different students during the next activity to see how much the reflections change. It would be interesting to see how the opinions on cooperative roles change over time as the students have had more and more exposure.

The students became increasingly more joyful over the course of my three lessons. Administering a cooperative lesson has shown me how engaging and collaborative hands-on activities are. The students were motivated to participate in the learning experience, especially knowing they would get to play the board games with their peers later on. My experience teaching the fifth grade students has shown me why I love this profession and how excited I am to student teach in just a few short months.








~ Christine Brown

Works Cited

Stahl, Robert J. "The Essential Elements of Cooperative Learning in the Classroom." Educational Resources Information Center. Used with permission.