Gaming the Lesson Plan

Last week, we had a volunteer with 20 years experience in working with Special Needs Children do a workshop with us in Classroom Management. At the end of the workshop, she gave us a BRAND NEW Monopoly set and told us that ANYTHING can be taught using boardgames. "Just replace the Comm Chest and Chance cards w/ your own."

Since she gave us Singapore Monopoly, we used a passage on Singapore from the Kids Encyclopedia Britannica to introduce new vocab and concepts like Economy, Terrain, Undulating, Monsoon, Thriving, Metropolis etc. The volunteers did a great job engaging the kids, age 9-11, to draw them into discussion - including bringing out a huge atlas and have kids find the equator, peninsulas, explaining monsoons, making sure the quieter ones (girls) got a chance to talk.


We had found a Monopoly card generator online, inserted our own text, and printed a bunch, interpersing them with the generic monopoly cards. Eg."Answer the question correctly and each player pays you $50". The quiz content was taken from the reading material. We've also had pictionary and Taboo-type questions in the cards.

It was great - the kids were engaged and they pretty much all participated. It coulda been the prospect of playing Monopoly rather than doing work sheets, or because the older "noisemakers" were offsite - so the younger noisy ones weren't so noisy. Anyway, it went swimmingly. We incorporated vocab, geography, a bit of math "Pay $2000 or 10% of your holdings."

Sunita, one of the volunteers, suggested that we continue with the game next week, picking up from where the kids left off. That way, we can revise the material, the vocab, continue with the quiz and the pictionary Comm Chest cards. So, everyone's tokens and money and property are now separate plastic bags the game will continue next week.

So - great start with the new ways of engaging the kids.