Video Games as a tool for Classroom Management

2 Crazy Texas Teachers are having a Linky Party on Classroom Management so I thought I would link up this post from a couple days ago.

Classroom Management can be very difficult.  Every teacher has a different style and every group of students is different.  Clip charts and changing colors are common with younger grades, but sometimes finding the right approach for 4-6 graders can be difficult. I have seen teachers use tickets or stickers.  Usually, there are consequences for negative behaviors and rewards for positive behaviors.  I think most of us would agree that as teachers we want students to be intrinsically motivated to choose the right behaviors.  However, sometimes the extrinsic motivations can help get students get started in the right direction. When they feel good for making the right choices, they can begin to build intrinsic motivation.

I would really like to read Conscious Discipline.  From Heather's comments, it sounds really good.  I think focusing on the positive helps to build the right sort of classroom community.  Some approaches I have tried in the past for for classroom management have been tickets to earn different types of passes and stickers to use in a classroom store.  I have seen students be motivated by grades or getting in trouble, and I have seen others only be motivated to earn candy. 

Last summer, I decided I wanted to try something different.  Two years ago, I had an extremely difficult class, and I think I did not handle classroom management as well as I would have liked.  I decided I wanted to create something that might appeal to even some of those difficult boys I had the year before.  I knew a lot of them played video games, so I wanted to create a classroom management system that functioned with a video game mentality.

Now, as a gamer wife I can tell you hard-core gamers are motivated by the achievements.  The drive comes from "I conquered it all and I was the best."  They play with perfection, commitment, and immense drive and loyalty. So I created a classroom management system based on achievements.  Students are put into teams (squads) and students earn points throughout the week for behavior, grades, and being responsible.  Students' individual points are added up to create team scores. I then divided the teams in half so there were sides.  In a game, there is almost always two sides - the good and the bad. I created a behavior chart to track the points.  I called my classroom management plan the "Student Scoring System."

At certain point intervals, students earn ranks and achievements.  The achievements were usually passes.  Now, you might be thinking how do the points get displayed?  At the beginning of school, students created avatars and drew them.  I laminated their avatars and put them up on the bulletin board.  I posted their scores next to their avatars. You can download the assignment to create the avatars and the behavior chart here.

Now to decide who my two sides were I struggled.  I decorated with an ocean/beach them, so I decided to do pirates versus navy.  I did some research and found some clipart online and made these personas and descriptions to display in my room. I cut them out, glued them to card stock, and laminated them.  (You can download a copy here.) I also made small pictures of just the "ranks" to display next to their avatars.

So that is one way you can incorporate video games into classroom management.  It was alot of work, but the students really enjoyed it.  They loved earning points and seeing their score go up.  I handed out new score cards each week.  They posted their ending score from the previous week as their new starting score.  They had to keep up with the scoring card throughout the week. If they lost it, they forfeited any points earned that week.  I collected score cards on Fridays.  I had students I trusted help me give out points.  I could walk around the room and add points or tell the class or certain squads to add points.  Students also could lose points for bad behavior or being unprepared.

You might be married to a gamer if...

You might be married to a gamer if…

• You know the difference between a casual gamer and a hard-core gamer
• You know the difference between a console gamer and a PC gamerYou have more computers at your house than people
• You have to talk to your husband through headphones
• You have to wait until your husband dies or finds a safe spot to ask him a question
• You dread the release of new MMO’s
• Expansion packs mean an adjustment of your weekly schedule
• You make major life decisions based on your husband’s responsibilities as a guild leader
• You know the difference between a ranged attacker, a tank, and a healer
• You understand the power behind achievements
• You understand the importance of xp
• You understand the age old question: “Do I complete all quests or only the ones that level me the fastest?”
• You understand that while some men hunt or spend seasons watching sports, other men raid.
• You could probably list all the major genres of games
• Your husband needs to own all gaming systems, but nothing is as precious as the PC.
• The PC gets updated/rebuilt annually
• You have a cabinet of spare computer parts
• The laptop goes on vacations with you
• Your husband could never live on a tropical island because the internet is not fast enough
• You have probably seen all of the SyFy shows
• You understand the nuances of true distinction between SciFi and Fantasy.
• Your husband can quote all of the Star Wars movies in entirety
• You feel well prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse

That is probably a good start…I could go on for a while after 8 years of marriage to a hard-core gamer.  As I mentioned the other day, it has given me some common ground with a lot of my boy students.  I do not listen to the same music as a lot of my previous students or necessarily watch the same shows.  I am not really a sports person, but I do know video games. 

I have thought for a while it would be fun to try and incorporate video games into the classroom a bit.  Tomorrow I am going to be explaining a classroom management idea I tried based on video games.  Some other ideas I have thought would be fun to use in the classroom:

Use video games as motivation for reluctant writers.

• They could describe a character
• They could write about a quest they completed from the point of view of a character in a game
• They could write about their favorite games and why
• They could describe how they would change an ending to a game

For practice with setting:

• They could describe the setting of a game in detail
• They could describe how they would improve the setting of a game
• They could write a new story that takes place in a game

They could imagine themselves as a game architect and design a game.
They could draw characters for a game.

Video Games usually tell a story, so they have the potential to be used as motivation for reluctant readers and writers.  I want to work on putting together some writing prompts and project ideas based on video games.  Have you ever used video games for discussion in your classroom?  What are some ways you would like to incorporate games into your classroom? How do you think they could motivate some of your students, especially some of the boys?  (There are girl gamers, too.)