My students need strategy board games (including Daytrader and Risk) to learn critical thinking an social cooperation skills in a way that is engaging and doesn't feel like school.
We need to foster critical thinking and strategy in our social studies and sciences classes. Our students want to be successful, but at the same time they need to learn how to cooperate and collaborate not just in school but in other aspects of life.
We teach in a inner city school in a rural county in North Carolina.
On the edge of an old factory town, with lower-middle to poverty income families our school (students and teachers) works hard every year to build the content knowledge and skill base of our students. As technology becomes more prevalent in their lives our students needs to work on communication and strategic thinking skills in person to person and face to face ways. The types of critical thinking and strategy that these board and strategy games will bring to our classes can increase our students short term and long term success and their ability to perceive set and achieve goals.
My Project
These strategy board games (including Daytrader and Risk) and RPG simulations will enable our students to learn interpersonal skills while also enabling to use the content knowledge that they learn in class. By making strategic game day a triweekly challenge the kids have not only a reason to meet their deadlines for other work but they will be able to use their knowledge to become more successful in the individual games. One of the great keys to learning in the 21st century is engagement. These games provide an engaging experience that enables our students to interact in both manipulative and critical thinking formats. As the year progresses we will challenge our students to conduct research that widens their knowledge base and eventually to design their own games in various formats that they can leave for future students. As they progress our students will be able to turn those strategic thinking skills toward real world issues and to take on big issues that will effect their futures.
Our budget is small, extremely small.
Your contributions to the project will bring our students to the gaming table and show them what they can accomplish by working together or in competition with each other. Many young students in middle school have trouble connecting the content in history or science class to the lives that they lead. These games provide a way for our students to use the critical creative minds that we know lurk just under the facade of the middle school child.
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