Games to play in class

[TLEberle]

The subject thread really says it all.  When in school, I always tried to work up a review game before a test.  Jeopardy's been done, no one really gets "Split Second," I found out about "Blockbusters" too late, and so forth.

So, if you ever got to play an out-there game show in school, post away.  If not, but you have a good one that will keep an entire class attentive throughout (eliminating players or teams is a REALLY bad idea) I'd love to hear from you too.

Thanks,
Travis

[BrandonFG]

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' date=\'May 25 2004, 11:30 PM\'] The subject thread really says it all.  When in school, I always tried to work up a review game before a test.  Jeopardy's been done, no one really gets "Split Second," I found out about "Blockbusters" too late, and so forth.

So, if you ever got to play an out-there game show in school, post away.  If not, but you have a good one that will keep an entire class attentive throughout (eliminating players or teams is a REALLY bad idea) I'd love to hear from you too.
 [/quote]
 How about an H^2 style game, where you take nine students, and have them answer questions, and then have the two contestants agree or disagree...hey, it'll prove whether or not they studied. :-)

Maybe even give the nine "panelists" the answers or something. Just a thought.

[Vgmastr]

I remember playing an Outburst-style game where the class was split into groups and each group was given a category and had a minute or so to yell out as many answers possible that fit into the category.  Depending on what you teach, you could make questions like "Cities in Canada" or "Things to do with Napoleon."  Kind of like the opening round of Cram.

Also, game show related, but not really useful unless you teach a foriegn language, in Spanish class, when we were learning numbers into the hundreds and thousands, we played the Price is Right where we had to bid on everything in Spanish.

[clemon79]

When I was in fifth grade, on Fridays, we would divvy the class up into half, and play one of two games: either Dictionary Bee, where we would be given a word and race against a member of the other team to look it up the fastest, or (and here's the point) Name That Word, where we would be given a definition, and bid as to how many letters we needed to identify the word.

Both were played with our teacher-mandated paperback American Heritage Dictionary, which I think I still have kicking around here somewhere to this day.

[TLEberle]

It's worth adding that if you have just a "game", rather than a game show, that's welcome as well.

As a note for the TPIR thing, my mom taught ESL for eons, and used to play "Clock Game" with numbers from 1-1000, with students calling out numbers, and she would say "higher" or "lower".  Not quite the same as Clock Game, but it did teach the concept.

Fire away!
Travis

[The Ol' Guy]

I got to do this a lot in junior high, and on rare occasions in high school - mostly History and English classes. First was a Truth Or Consequences variation with a few simple stunts using ping pong balls, paper cups - the typical Beat The Clock game-type props. Also did Squares, The Face Is Familiar (cutting up fan magazine full-page photos into strips), and a few others that memory doesn't recall exactly which ones. Sometimes we did them as an "end of the week" goof-around thing, sometimes we worked the lesson questions into them. But it was a fun time, and I still do things like that for church parties and senior home get-togethers. As long as we didn't go too far off the hook, the teachers were cool with it.

[FOXSportsFan]

Squares seems to be popular in high school.  I created a pretty fun H2 presentation prior to the final exam in my English class.  It went over pretty well (considering that the squares were not briefed of the answers in advance).  Heck the teacher got to be center square...hence every chance I could I'd refer to her as Joan Rivers.

Oddly enough, they liked the Squares thing so much, that I set up another game, Family Feud.  Very cheapo.  The teacher was the board holder and revealer (if only the presentation software was available back then...) and the buzzer was simply who could smack the podium i stood at fastest.  One good thing about the Feud game...I got to kiss every gal in my class...and they didn't smack me back.

- Jim

[adamjk]

I have participated in a Family Feud show at my school. The shows have involved different clubs in school. The first show, had a very small scale feel to it. They used the buzzer from the taboo game for strikes, and the strikes were drawn on paper. The board itself wasn't that great either. Before the next show, I used my teacher the software online, and we have used it ever since. I also played in one show. My team the choir did not win, but when I went up for the face-off I got the #1 answer. Next year, we may do a Halloween show, and I wanna host.

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'adamjk\' date=\'May 26 2004, 05:09 PM\'] and I wanna host. [/quote]

[quote name=\'tvwxman\' date=\'May 26 2004, 06:31PM\']Yep. Obsession.[/quote]
[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'May 26 2004, 06:21PM\']I dunno. I think I'm still going with "obsession". [/quote]
Imagine this.  I'd defintely say you have an unhealthy obsession with Family Feud...and others seems to agree.

As an actual contribution to this thread...when a sex-ed group did a presentation at our school, they put on a game of "$20,000 Pyramid".  Of course, I managed to mess up "STD"....

[Kevin Prather]

I remember playing Password at one point. "The password is 'variable'...". lol.

[JayC]

Twice last year, we played Password during World History to help us with vocabulary.  We'd have to take 3 words about a famous person, event, place, etc, and have our person guess what it is with those clues.  

I also remember playing Jeopardy probably a million times in middle school, plus in 6th grade we played a trivia version of family feud somewhat frequently, and in Math, we would sometimes play the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Online game, and "Who wants to have no homework tonight", where we would do math problems to work our way to having no homework.  Oh how I miss 6th grade...

[1978-Jeopardy]

In high school, we had this insane Global history teacher. He talked to puppets, but he was a great teacher. I guess in that case, you don't have to be sane to be a good educator. (But then again, isn't Global history an insane category?)

Anyway, if time permitted, he used to set up a game of "hollywood squares". 9 of us got our own box (celebrities), and two of my peers got to be contestants.

I don't know which ward he is now.....

[dzinkin]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' date=\'May 26 2004, 12:54 AM\'] How about an H^2 style game, where you take nine students, and have them answer questions, and then have the two contestants agree or disagree...hey, it'll prove whether or not they studied. :-)

Maybe even give the nine "panelists" the answers or something. Just a thought. [/quote]
 You just have to be sure they understand the basic of Squares.  Once my fifth-grade Hebrew school teacher had us play "Hollywood Squares" and I was insistent that the host wasn't supposed to say "right" or "wrong" until the "contestant" agreed or disagreed.  He insisted that it was straight Q&A -- and I was sent to the principal's office for a long lecture on why it was wrong to question a rabbi's wisdom. :-)

[dmota104]

Toward the end of my 8th grade year in my junior high days, we played "Tic Tac Grade".

Played pretty close to TTD.  The teacher, Mr. Pat Hershey, had index cards with the category names on the board and, with each category, was an illustration (a la TJW).  

Whenever a box was not won by the X or O student player, he had another student discard that card where a new category was (I think Mr. Hershey had ten total categories in each box).  Thus, there was no shuffle after each turn.  

Since this was Science class, there were lots of Science questions -- but a few general knowledge subjects in there (Current Events, Rock Music, etc.).

---

A year earlier in Health class, as part of learning about the dangers of alcoholism,  came Celebrity Squares.  Yup, play just like HS.  We had 27 students in the class -- so 9 of them were the celebrities, another 9 made up "Team X" and the remaining 9 "Team O".  After each game, the roles rotated.

Oh, and the game was hosted by Mrs. Sylvia Caldwell.  

(And no, we didn't have any red boxes on the board...in either case!)

[Millionaire76]

Hmm...Winning Lines that aired shortly, hosted by Dick Clark