Board Game Review

Go to the Related Applett:
To visit the accompanying applet go to the following link: Board Game Review Applet

Objectives:
-Students will answer review questions.
-Students will work together as a team, problem solving, strategizing, and teaching one another.

Introduction:
Board Game Review is a new and fun way to review with your students. I have tried various methods of review; however, this has proven to have kept the most students engaged, and attentive during the whole class and wishing they had more time when the bell rings.

I will lay out the rules for Board Game Review as played by my classes; however, I have purposely left the actual tools used to play the game very lose so you can change and adapt the rules of the game anyway you want to according to the needs of your class.

Board Game review is simply a game in which students work together to answer review questions and then place tokens on a board to win territory. They may also defend and attack different players to try and gain their territory. Not only does it help students review but also teaches communication skills and problem solving strategies.

Setup:
Create teams of two to four students before class, making teams balanced with students you know will work well and benefit from each other. Letting students select their own team may work for some advanced classes; however, general rule of thumb, to prevent slacking design the teams yourself.

Prepare a list of review questions you want to ask the class during the day. I have found I can generally get through about 10-15 questions in 45 minutes.

Tape pieces of paper up on the board with different team colors. This will provide a way for teams to write their moves secretly and strategically later on. It will also give them an opportunity to get up out of their desk. The possible colors are blue, red, green, yellow, purple, orange, pink, brown, white, black.

Explain the rules to the students before separating them into groups. After giving the explanation have the students sit in their groups with all the desks facing one another. Pull up the web site and project it up on the board with the overhead projector. You are now ready to play.

How the Game Plays:
Start the game by letting each team pick a starting country and place their token on that country. Ask the class a question or write the question up on the board and have the group work together on separate pieces of paper, showing their own work yet still being able to help one another. When everyone in the group has the answer they will raise their hands and show you their individual papers. If someone in the group isn’t done, simply move on to the next group.

When a group has all of its members with the same answer and work shown give the group a number representing what place they have answered the question. If they are the first group done they get a one, second group would get a two, and so on.

Have a different member from the group run up to the board each time and write outside of the paper what place they are. They then will lift the paper and write their answer and the letter of the country they want to place a token on. They can only go to a country that is connected by a path with a country with their tokens already in it.

After a set amount of time go over the correct answer. Lift the pieces of paper in order and if the team got the correct answer place an addition token upon the country they wanted to invade. If the country they want to invade is occupied by a different team, simply click on the attack button at the top of the board. If it says defenders win, then the invading team can’t do anything. If it says attackers win, then the invaders replace the other teams token with one of theirs. I make it a rule that players can only invade countries that are connected with a path, and if they write down a country they can not physically invade that they basically skip their turn because they planned poorly.

At the end of the class the team with the most countries with their tokens on them wins. It is as simple as that.

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