 Hello and welcome to this Wednesday webinar as part of the Marzano Instructional Series. In this webinar we will be talking about academic games, which is a component of student engagement. So as we continue this series of webinars on the Marzano Instructional Model, I want to emphasize the fact that the most significant factor in student learning is the teacher in the classroom. So this webinar, along with others, we will be discussing several research-based elements to help improve teacher effectiveness. So where is the school district to begin to help improve teacher effectiveness? Well, one of the first steps a district can take is developing a common language of instruction. And this one in particular we will be discussing the Marzano Art and Science of Teaching. So the Art and Science of Teaching is designed to address all grade levels in all content areas and it also provides a great deal of autonomy for teachers as professionals to decide what particular elements or strategies would work best for maybe that teacher's teaching style as well as the students that are in the teacher's classes. So here is the model. And we have three main categories, feedback, content, and context. And today, specifically, we will be under engagement and we will be looking at using academic games. So student engagement, academic games. Why do academic games help with student engagement? Well humans have this innate desire to fill in missing information and predict outcomes. And then we want to stick around and see how things actually turn out. There's probably the main reason we can't turn off the game that we're in the middle of watching. We want to know how things are going to turn out. So that particular innate human desire really helps to encourage student engagement when you're working with an academic game. So what does engagement look or sound like in a classroom? Well one thing I do want to emphasize is we should not confuse compliance for engagement. Just because a student is sitting there quietly doesn't mean they're engaged with the content. A student that comes in the classroom and thinks, well all I have to do is follow the rules and complete this worksheet, then I'm out of here. That's not what we're looking for in terms of student engagement. We want these students to really be engaged with the content and interact with the content and each other. So here are just some basic rules for student engagement and you'll see this ties to several of the other elements that are in student engagement. The physical movement, while Trump's sitting, we know we get more oxygen to the brain for the students. Also talking, Trump's listening. Listening is a very passive activity whereas talking is going to require more thought on the students. Images trump words. Images tend to stir up more memories and emotions and feelings than words do and it will stay with the students longer. Also shorter is better than a longer period of time. Another particular element in the Marzano model is chunking. Do we chunk the material? Do we do maybe small bits at a time and then shift gears? Also novel Trump's common. Another element is presenting unusual information. Anytime you bring in something that's unique, that's going to stay with the students longer and help them engage with the content. So now we're going to dive into specific games that can be used in a classroom. A lot of these revolve around vocabulary words which would work well for any content area. The first one I'll show you is called catchphrase. Any of you that watch Jimmy Fallon, you might see them play this quite often. Also it's sometimes called talk a mile a minute or I'll date myself and say the $10,000 pyramid. It's pretty close to what we use there. You could even modify this a little bit to do it like the game called password where they can only give a single word to help give a hint. But anyway, in terms of catchphrase, typically the way this works is, for example, I would put this list of words up and the students have partnered where one partner is looking at the list and another one is turned away. So the first partner has to get the other one that's not looking to say these words. So they have to describe them and use their own language and their own vocabulary to get them to say these words. And then I would have them switch and then I would give them another list and have the other student use their words and vocabulary to have the other student come up with these. And that one's a lot of fun and you really can feel the energy rise in the classroom when you're working on that. So there's always some element of competition in a classroom that usually engages students. So that first game is called catchphrase. So another game is taboo and this is a board game, you've probably seen it out there. The way this one works is a word, again, you wouldn't have students partnered up and one would be looking at the screen and one would not. And you would put the word that you're trying to get the other student to say up on the board. However, they are also given a list of words that they cannot say in trying to describe the word that was given. So if the word I'm trying to get my partner to say is weather, I cannot use the terms forecast, outside temperature or rain to get my partner to say that word. That really, I would say this is probably a little level up from catchphrase because now they have to come up with other phrases and really dig deep in terms of coming up some other vocabulary to help their partner guess their correct word. So that's taboo. Okay, another fun game to play is called which one doesn't belong. And in this case, I would just open this up to the whole class. In this particular example, I would put up these four words and they can each either individually or with a partner decide which one doesn't belong and there are lots of different answers to these questions and it's really pretty fun to see what the students come up with. For example, if these are the list of words, I have dime, ride, ice and wilt. Well, one student might say three of them have a long I and wilt does not. So maybe wilt doesn't belong. You might have a student say dime is the one that doesn't belong because the other three could be verbs, ride, ice or wilt. Or you always get that student out there that says ice doesn't belong because it doesn't have four letters. So anyway, it's pretty fun to see what the students come up with in terms of which one doesn't belong. Here's another example that we could use with just shapes, with math, so you don't have to use words. It could just be shapes. Which one doesn't belong? Is it the circle because it's not a polygon, doesn't have straight edges? Is it the square because it's red and the other are blue? Is it the top rectangle because it's not filled in? So again, lots of different combinations that the students could use and it's always fun to see what their justification is. So once again, they're going to be interacting with the content. They have to make some justifications and some explanations for their thinking. Oh yeah, and another website, the W-O-D-B actually stands for which one doesn't belong. And this is a website that has lots and lots of examples that are all math for which one doesn't belong. So please check out that website if you're a math teacher and I think there's about every grade level on there in terms of some possibilities that could be used. So please check that website out. Okay, another game is called Possible Pairs. Again, you could use words, you could use pictures. Here's an example where I give them a list of these six words and they pair them however they want, but they have to justify how they pair them. So a comma, question mark, hyphen, period, semicolon, or quotation marks. Once again, it's really fun to see what students come up with. They could do it individually and then share with a partner. And once again, the important component there is they have to explain why they have paired certain items together. Okay, another fun game for the elementary level here is a contraction dice game. And again, this could be a dice game. You can use anything it doesn't have to be for contractions. But if you make some dice and you write different things on them and then they roll the dice and then the students in this particular case would have to, with their partner, give the proper contraction. They would have to say it and they would have to spell it. So anytime you can throw in some sort of game element, the students are going to be more engaged. I certainly don't want to leave off tech tools. There are some great resources out there for teachers to use. Many of you are probably familiar with Kahoot. A quizzes is very similar to that. Certainly lots of apps like Heads Up. I'm also a fan of Quizlet Live. Though I prefer tools that encourage or require students to interact with each other and they're not just working on their own. Quizlet Live is really good for that. And there's another webinar that I've done on Quizlet Live. If you'd like to take a look at that tool. And I know with Quizlet Live and Kahoot and possibly quizzes, you can get the results of how the students did after taking those quizzes. And I think it's important that we look at those results to see how our students are doing in terms of our learning goals. It's really important when we're doing games that we take some time after the game to debrief and see how students are doing in their learning. Quizlet Live, I know it will show you how students did. There's one slide that says what we learned today, what we already know, and maybe the ones that we need to spend some more time on. So please take some time after these games to really interact with your students and debrief on what they've learned from that particular interaction. So just a reminder about student engagement. It refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that they have while they're learning. And I think anytime you have a teacher that is also passionate and curious and loves their content that will certainly be mirrored in their students. And anytime you can make a psychological connection with the learning with the students, and maybe that's physically the students are up and moving around with it mentally they're required to think more critically about the information or socially they have opportunities to interact with the content with their peers and certainly emotionally anytime we can make a deeper connection maybe to some background experience that will help students engage with the content. And last I think it's important to self reflect. How are we using the results from these academic games to make instructional decisions? How are my students doing in terms of progressing towards those learning goals? The real impact on student achievement is going to be how we're using those results to make those instructional decisions and help our students move forward. So please take some time to do that. We don't want to do academic games just to do academic games. Certainly that helps with engagement, but we also want to make some instructional decisions based on those results. And I know there's lots of other tools out there. So I encourage you to share and collaborate with your peers. So thank you for listening to my webinar on academic games to help with student engagement. If you should have any questions please feel free to contact me at the ESU.