The cost of 5 Risk Board Games purchased from Areyougame.com is $166, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
Understanding the happenings in the world in which one lives is not an easy task for any of us. A teenager in a lower income town that is part of an extremely affluent county has an even more difficult time in understanding why they even need to know what exists beyond "Zeblon".
There is a very good reason the schools in our attendance area post scores that are in the bottom levels of performance in Wake County. Our children have very little life experience. Beginning to understand the elective I teach, Global Conflict is as if they are hearing a foreign language spoken. While they can be forced to memorize the battles of World War I, the reasons for the war, etc. there is very little understanding of the reasoning behind conflicts between countries. It seems impossible to them that the world map today is more like the 1800s than the rest of the 20th Century seems totally unexplainable to them.
There are web sites I thought might help, but they did not assist my students in developing the higher level thinking skills needed to understand background causes of conflicts. In searching for tools to assist seventh and eighth graders in learning to plan and execute strategy, the game of RISK continued to come up as a viable tool. There is a computer edition that is most cost efficient, but the process to have it added to Wake County computers is very lengthy.
Finally, I purchased one copy of the game and took it into my classroom. All of the students from the non readers to the higher achieving students wanted to play that game. They were able to teach each other to strategize and plan their moves. After one capture a student said, "Now I understand what all those arrows were trying to show me. I have to think and plan better than she does to beat her." RISK is most effective with 6 students per board. I have twenty-eight students in my elective class. I need five additional boards, giving me a total of six boards, to make this learning experience effective with my students.
Learning to think and strategize is vital for the advancement of my students both in school and in their lives. Without concrete decisions to be made in a safe environment, they may not have those experiences. Students also need to understand how the political atmosphere of this current world has been established. By playing RISK and studying the world conflicts since World War I, they have a much better chance at making this advancement.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. L. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.