Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Fun and Games

During a visit back to a past placement I got the opportunity to teach literacy for the week. I was given free reign to teach anything I wanted... so we ended up making board games and writing instructions for them. Over the week we looked at all the things needed to write our game instructions as instructional texts - structure, purpose and language features. During this week I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try out a behavioural management game. So as a class we discussed four points that would help us to get the best out of the learning time that we had. Then using Google Drawings I created an image of a snakes and ladders board with movable counters. As the students went about their learning I gave them opportunities to roll the dice and move their teams counter up the board. My inquiry into this activity was to observe and reflect on how students respond to behavioural games within the classroom. I wanted to reflect on whether behaviourism methods work and if they are effective. During the week we played the game on and off whenever students where working on their personal games. In the beginning I found some students quickly responded to the game and stayed on task well with their groups. Whilst others weren't so interested in the beginning they did respond as the days went on. Another observation I made was during a period when the teacher was absent from the room and the students were a little off task by introducing the game order was quickly established. One factor within the classroom which changed was the mood. Whilst playing the game students enjoyed seeing each other get a chance to have a turn and were generally cheerful. In conclusion from this inquiry, I think this behaviour game did have overall positive effects. I would not agree that this would work in all situations due to other factors but overall I would be keen to try and experiment with other activities to bring good behaviour and enjoyment whilst also learning.

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