Chinarchy

What Is Jeopardy?

by Anderson | 04/01/10 | 3 comments

Warning: This post may only be interesting to teachers.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different games and teaching activities. Sometimes they are spontaneous ideas created during class — like turning a ball throwing game into Hot Potato — and other times I plan them out.

The game I’ve put the most work into has been my version of Jeopardy. Jeopardy totally got the administration off my back today when they saw it in action. I had been getting critiqued all week and the senior consultant wasn’t happy with my experimental lessons. Today I whipped out my trusty Jeopardy and blew her balls off. So this post is dedicated to Jeopardy, how I developed it and why it’s awesome.

Originally it was a spur of the moment decision. About ten minutes before class started I decided that I would draw a grid on the white board, fill it with different point values (first row 100, second row 200, etc.), and divide the class into two teams. Each team got a turn — no buzzing in — to pick one of the spots on the grid.

I would ask them to repeat an English word, phrase, or sentence and they would have to answer all together at first and then one-by-one. I told them that everyone on the team had to say their English correctly in order to get points, but in reality I gave them the points no matter what.

I scaled the difficulty of the phrase or sentence based on how many points they stood to gain, and I always included the key words they needed to learn for that week.

And I used the rule that only the team answering can talk. This is a great way to keep the classroom relatively quiet. I’m planning another post about rules, rewards, and punishments and the contexts that I’m starting to find them both useful and appropriate, so more on that later.

This set up worked pretty well for about ten minutes. Pretty quickly the kids realized that since it was just going back and forth and nobody ever lost points it wasn’t really a competition at all. They kept playing, but I could sense that the interest wouldn’t last long.

I toyed with the idea of removing the turn based system and figuring out a way to let them buzz in. Maybe I could give each team leader a bell to ring. At least there would be competition over who could ring first. But in Jeopardy you buzz in when you know the correct response to a clue, in my game all you have to do is say an English phrase, so they would be ringing their bells constantly. Oh, also they are five-year-olds. Giving bells to five-year-olds is like giving crack to five-year-olds.

So I tried another modifications. I attempted to be strict with the scoring. Both my Chinese assistant and I explained to them that it was just a game and it was okay to lose points but that I was going to be judging more harshly. There were nods of understanding. This actually might work. They know it’s a game, they don’t actually care about points.

The first round of the game one of the girls refused to say her English phrase. “That’s okay,” I said, “but I’m only going to be able to give the team 400 points instead of 500.” The team leader instantly burst into tears. Right, terrible idea Anderson. Better luck next time.

I introduced different category columns in the grid. I wanted this to provide an incentive other than point value. The kids would have to balance how comfortable they were with certain topics with how many points were available. This helped, a little — it made the game more interesting. But since they still knew they were going to be getting full points anyway, it didn’t really motivate them to act that differently.

Right now, the game still has column categories. But it has a huge point bonus if one team clears an entire column. It also has Daily Doubles (but no wagering, you just get twice the point value of that question.)

The introduction of these things has taken a little time — since they all increased the game’s complexity — but it has made it so much more fun and engaging.

It scales really well now. Some of the kids don’t really care about anything other than saying the phrases and knowing they got points awarded. Others are really into the strategy of going after a whole column versus just going after the highest point values.

Today during snack-time I found the two team leaders sitting together discussing the different strategies. (One them informed me that four Daily Doubles would be more fair than just three.) It reminded me of staying up all night playing Unreal Tournament with my friends from home. We would spend the time either playing or just sitting around talking about strategy while eating Doritos. It was fun, and I was glad my students were so into the game that they were doing the same thing.

And it has some randomness now — the Daily Doubles — which really keeps the game interesting and actually makes it more competitive. Obviously, too much randomness makes a game pointless, but a certain amount makes it more fun, more competitive, and more interesting to keep playing.

Too much randomness and you have a slot machine, no randomness and you have chess. A good balance of randomness and you get poker. (Not sure if gameplay theory is an interesting topic for you guys, but I could on forever about it.)

As it is right now Jeopardy is definitely my best teaching tool. It engages the kids of all skill levels, it has both strategy and randomness, it has an internal reward and rule system, it’s competitive, it has variety, and it lets them practice English individually.

I’m sure as we keep playing I’ll have to adapt the game more and more, so if you have any ideas about how to make it even more effective let me know. Also feel free to steal this and use it, I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.