Game+Show+Strategy

Game Shows V 3-5 V 6-8 II Time, Continuity, and Change III People, Places, and Environment IV Individual Development and Identity VI Power, Authority, and Governance Teachers and students can use the popular competitive formats of television game shmvs to higWight well-known individuals, places, or events (Clegg, 1991). Such formats provide novelty and excitement and are effective in encouraging students to connect new learning to their previous experience. Game shows such as Win Ben Stein)s Money, Hollywood Squares, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? can be modified to allow students to review material or to demonstrate mastery of material. Shows such as Let)s Make a Deal and Survivor may be adapted for students to explore decision making. Younger students will need teacher assistance in setting up and playing the game; older students should set up the rules and play the game with minimal teacher supervision. • Determine which game-show format best supports the content to be addressed. Remember, while the strategy may help to engage the learners, the goal of using game shows is to facilitate the learning. • Determine appropriate adaptations. Most of these games reinforce prior learning of facts. Typically, they do not work well with higher-order thinking. Consider this information and the classroom setting when making the appropriate adaptations. For example, if using a Jeopardy format, write the clues as fill-in-the-blank, multiple-choice, or true-false questions and have students answer the questions. This is different from the typical Jeopardy structure which requires the players to answer in the form of a question. Write the questions on 3" x 5" cards. If the goal is decision making using LetJs Make a Deal, create scenarios (e.g., economic, historical) in which students choose from alternatives, explaining and supporting their choices. Older students can generate their own questions. • Arrange teams (ifneeded). Use grouping procedures that are effective in your classroom. Heterogenous groups are recommended. • Review with students the game procedures and rules of play, including how long teams may collaborate before they must issue a response. The game-show landscape changes monthly, and students may be more or less familiar with different game shows. Providing students with an example of the game show that is the inspiration for the classroom game show will assist students in making that connection. This may be "Something simple like a 5- to IO-minute video clip of the show. • Establish ground rules for behavior during and at the conclusion of play. • Determine which team goes first. Arrange for scorekeeping. • Arrange for scorekeeping. Students in one classroom collaborate to produce a This Is Your Life program about a prominent historical figure. In a unit of study on the American Revolutionary War era, students select an individu_,!lthey would like to study. With teacher facilitation and through additional study, the class determines who (from the era) would know about this person. These contemporaries may be professional colleagues, family members, individuals who agree and disagree with the work of the individual, and so on. These contemporaries serve as the guests who are brought onstage to talk about their relationship with that individual. In this program, the audience meets John Adams, the featured figure. They also meet Richard Henry Lee, Abigail Adams, John Hancock, John Quincy Adams, and Samuel Adams-all figures from Adams's life. Once the contemporaries are chosen, students are assigned roles. In a large class, two students are assigned one person. Students research the featured individual as well as their person, paying particular attention to when and where their lives intersected and the historical, political, economic, and social context of their relationship. Of particular interest are primary source documents (e.g., letters) that contain references to one another or transcripts of conversations between the two. During the "show," students play each of the roles, discussing the events of Adams's life, including his accomplishments in Revolutionary Boston and during his presidency. The teacher weaves together the stories told by the guests in a chronology of Adams's life. Students demonstrate content mastery in their presentations and in their conversations with one another. In another classroom, students who model their presentation on the television show Survivor demonstrate a series of skills such as operating a voting machine, mediating a dispute between two students, or planning a protest. The members of each team then draw fate cards to see "vho leaves the island because he or she inhaled secondhand smoke, lived downstream from a dioxin spill, or did not wear a seat belt. (Note that students use human-created environmental hazards rather than the corrosive social pressure of voting their peers off the island.) When students play LetJs Make a Deal, they examine values. In court case scenarios, they make a choice between two opposing values such as privacy and free speech. At the next level, students appeal and win more or keep what they have; students go to the next level by looking at case law or legal precedent. This activity encourages students to think seriously about the type of society in which they want to live. They make studied decisions, risking judicial review of those decisions. Bishop, K. K. (1995). You can't touch this, Vanna White. English in Texas, 27(1), 21-22. Brown-Guillory, E. (1987). The wheel offortune: Peer grouping and collaborative writing. Exercise Exchange, 33(1),17-18. Clegg, A. A. (1991). Games and simulations in social studies education. In J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 523-529). New York: Macmillan. Gallagher, A. F. (1991). A talk show from the past. Update on Law-Related Education, 15(1),20-22. Sheppard, M. (1977). TV talk: Instant classroom celebrities with TV game shows. Teacher, 94(7), 34-37. Trandel, G. A. (1999). Using a TV game show to explain the concept ofa dominant strategy. Journal of Economic Education, 30(2), 133-140.