Gaming Your Class & Facilitating Student Learning

My son, who is in second grade, loves his math game that he plays at school to perfect his adding, subtraction, multiplication and division.  I like looking at him playing games at school or home because he is fully engaged and doesn't mind failing - over and over - until he beats everyone - even some of the people in my department. Well that has been one of the things I have been doing this year is having a ton of teacher facilitated class.  But I still wonder if I could add some games in the future.  The video above has some great idea and while it is from a science teacher, but it works for almost all of us.

Some of the items he covers is the fact that he re-organized his class over the summer (which is why now is a good time to post this) and created a class which had podcasts (I would use videocasts), activities to apply in the real world inquiry labs, mastery quizzes (which could be taken over and over) and a leader board which is the most popular item to log onto.  He even offers suggestions for improvement such as more reading, scaffolding and thinks he should make his game more social since that is the most enjoyable element for students at school.

But the main point is that students were able to go at their own pace and that the learning was key and the grade less so.  Think about it as you think about your improvements for next year!