If You Are on the Fence About Gamification, Jump Over....I'll Show You How and Why I Did

To say I have a great group of kids this year would be an understatement.  I have a awesome group of kids.  Of course, that doesn’t mean they are perfect.  As teachers, we always discuss how a certain group of kids can build a reputation for certain things.  For example, someone might say, “Just wait until you get these next 4th graders.  They are an athletic group”.  What I remember hearing about the group this year is that they were a tough group.  Well they must have morphed over the summer.  They are polite, kind and funny as a group.  If I had to pick one area that frustrates me with them, it would be responsibility.  In the first few weeks of school, I would give an assignment and the day it was due, about 16 kids out of 48 would turn it in on time.  That blew me away.  How could so many of this sweet group of kids not turn something in?  Of course, I assumed it was me.  My directions were terrible or something like that.  Then I started creating video directions and nothing changed.  I took points off assignments if they were late.  Still nothing changed.  I started racking my brain and trying to think of someway to motivate these kids.  I believe something flowed across my Twitter feed about Gamification.  It’s not like it’s a new topic but I’ve never really let it get inside by head.  I went ahead and read up on it and the ideas of how it might help this group started flowing like fine wine.    

             

Gamification can mean different things to different people.  For me, I wanted it to be a way to make the students better students but also better people.  I wanted to get away from the mind set of punishing kids for what they are not doing and into the mindset of rewarding them for what they are doing.  I teach reading and writing to two 5th grade classes.  I started the whole gamification journey by asking the students, “If this classroom was a video game, what would the name of the game be?”  My first period class came up with the game title, “Clash of the Warriors”.  My second period class came up with, “Rise of the Warrior”.  The game titles alone got me fired up and made me want to redo our whole class into a video game concept.  I started by thinking, “What do I want the students to do?”.  That led me to create a system of actions that would be rewarded with points.  Here is the link to my points system.  Points  Next, I created a system of levels that the students could achieve as they earned points.  Here is the link to the levels.  Levels  It wasn’t easy trying to come up with those levels but I wanted to make it look as cool as possible for the kids, so you can see how the font changes and grows as they move up levels.  Mind you all this creating was going on without the students knowledge.  The more I got into it, the more I got motivated to make it epic.  The kids were then given a secret name.  I had to come up with 48 names, so I tried to make it easy.  The names are random names like PinkUnicorn01.  I try to be sly, so I don’t make the PinkUnicorn1 a girl.  I give that name to a boy.  They have to keep their name a secret.  There are two reasons for that.  The first reason is because I knew I was going to post a leaderboard and I didn’t want any child feeling bad because they were at the bottom of the leaderboard.  This way, they only see a fake name and they have no idea who it represents.  The other reason is because by earning 1500 points, they reach The Ultimate Warrior level and they earn their way to a party.  This is no ordinary party.  It’s a reveal party.  At the party, they must try to dress up as whatever their name is.  They reveal their identity at the party.  When I told them this, I think their heads almost exploded.  The excitement was thick in the air.  I have a checklist for each class and I award points during the week and add them to the checklist as they earn them.  Over the weekend, I submit the points to Class Dojo and enter them separately into a Google Form that calculates a Leaderboard.  Here is what the leaderboard looks like and the credit for it goes to Chris Hesselbein.  I found his video on YouTube.  Leaderboard  In one way, the kids are competing against each other because the person with the most points will get an award.  The top ten will also get awards.  In another way, they are working together to succeed.  The group points part of the system has kids encouraging each other and helping each other.  I don’t care if they are only doing it for points.  Isn’t it said that if you do something enough times, it becomes a habit?  What a shame if having good manners, learning teamwork and becoming responsible become a habit right?  Wrong!  Bring on the good habits.  I should add that a friendly little rivalry was born between my two classes.  They came up with the idea of competing against each other. We worked on making video game posters for each class. Check them out.  

We’ve been doing this for three weeks now and I can report the changes I’ve seen.  Let’s start with the turning work in on time.  The first assignment showed quite an improvement from the beginning of the year.  The 16/48 kids turning an assignment in on time, turned into 47/48 kids turning the assignment on time.  When I wrote that I could literally hear Matt Damon saying, “How do you like them apples?”.  I know that may sound a bit corny but that turn around just fires me up.  The kids are also showing better manners.  We just had 4H earlier in the week and I had to step out of the room for a meeting.  In past years, the kids could be pretty rude to the 4H teacher.  When I returned, the 4H teacher said, “That is the most polite group of kids I have taught all year.”  It never hurts a teacher to hear comments like that.  I also see kids picking things up in the hallways, helping each other and doing assignments that I didn’t even assign.  I’m just waiting to see where the hurdles are going to be but hoping there won’t be any.  One thing I keep asking myself is, “Why didn’t I give Gamification a chance earlier?”.   Stay tuned for the end of this marking period when I take pictures at the reveal party.  I know I can’t wait!  I will have another little surprise for them at the party.  I can’t write about it here because my students might read this and that will give it away.  It’s just too good of a surprise to ruin, so make sure you check out my follow up in a few weeks.  I know it will be worth it.