Gamification is a popular method that businesses and some teachers have used to add in game elements to improve productivity and engagement.
I am not sure when I first heard about it, but I decided at ISTE I would give it a shot. I also tried it some at the end of last school year. There will be two aspects that I will put into my self contained fourth grade classroom this school year. I am going to use Class Dojo as an achievement point system and classroom economy. I will also convert all of my grades into experience points instead of percentages. I plan to incorporate a leveling system that allows students to level up, unlocking more rewards they can buy with their achievement/Class Dojo points.
The achievement point thing is simple. Class Dojo has a great platform to award, track, and spend points that I can customize to anything I want. The first few achievements involve completing start of year paperwork.
The hard part was getting my head around a grading system that would work with our school report cards, grading requirements, and fit naturally into the PBL model we are using. Here is my plan for that.
First of all here are my “rules”
- The report cards require six subjects - reading, grammar, spelling, math, science, and social studies.
- I am required to have one “daily work” grade per week per subject, but these can overlap. So a student could get a reading grade and a social studies grade on the same comprehension assignment.
- I am required to have one “major assignment” grade every three weeks.
I will create a menu/contract/list of choices that students will complete each week for each subject. Here is one I quickly made for spelling. These assignments will be completed for the “daily grade” and students will need 1000 experience points each week per subject. I will decide on a case by case basis about allowing extra work. Students will have 6 of these menus, or what I’ll call quest lists, each week to complete. Taking time to get extra experience points will only help them level up but not improve the grade. The concern I have is that a student would do extra spelling work when they haven’t finished their math work. I will assign no homework beyond reading each night, which students can actually use as part of their reading quests if they complete a summary of what they read. Students will be allowed to do their “daily assignment” quests as homework if they choose to.
I plan on providing a lot of opportunity for overlap as well so a student could complete part of their reading, science, and even grammar all in one blog post that summarizes science work they read about and they choose to have evaluated for grammar. The Engage PBL model will have students participating in small group lessons (called workshops) and independent practice work (called DIYs). What I found is that these quests will fit in well with those workshops and DIYs. I just need to customize the quest sheets to match our current project(s).
So now I have presented a quick overview of my plan, time to give it a try, reflect, and make it better. Gamification might be a big topic of my blog posts this school year as I try to integrate it. Please feel free to leave feedback in the comments.
