Games for Sense-Making

Last year we started looking at sense-making activities for the presentation phase of a lesson. Our first post introduced the idea; our second listed types of sense-making activities with brief examples. Now, we’re making our way through each type with more detailed examples and potential usage guidelines.

The focus of this post is on games. As you read through the examples and guidelines below. Keep in mind:

Our Definition of Sense-Making Activities: Here on Master Teaching, we’re defining sense-making activities NOT as practice exercises or tasks that follow up on the presentation of new material. Rather, they are presentation phase activities that guide students to make sense of new information before or in place of a lecture or explanation given by the teacher or textbook.

Your Participation: We’d love to hear from you about your sense-making activities. If you’d like to submit an activity or report on one you’ve used, you can post a comment below or communicate with us privately through our contact us page.

Now, let’s talk about using games as sense-making activities during the presentation phase of a lesson.

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Definition

Games are small group or whole class activities that use a familiar game set up to guide learners to figure out terms, concepts, or other new information.

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Guidelines

1. In order to use a game as a sense-making activity, it is set up so that new material is learned through participation rather than taught first and then practiced by playing the game. While sense-making, learners may need:

• to be involved in the game’s design.
• to play the game more than once, in a different order, or with a different partner.
• to play the game with textbooks or class notes open.

2. Collaboration—playing the game in teams of two to four students—is an important part of the learning process.

• It encourages students to negotiate with and learn from one another.
• It ensures that everyone has an opportunity to participate equally, especially in larger classes.
• It builds learners’ cooperation skills.
• It may solve logistics problems, especially in larger classes. (Printing, copying, cutting, and organizing can take time. If using an online tool, the site may limit the number of simultaneous users, or some students may not be able to load the website on their device.)

3. Familiar game concepts should be unashamedly tweaked in order to fit with materials being learned, students’ level and other needs, enhancing their ability to figure out and process new information.

4. Careful monitoring and a follow up discussion or activity will likely be needed in order to ensure learners have come to solid conclusions.

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Types

You’ve likely used some of the different types of games below as practice activities. Have you also used them as sense-making activities? How? If not, consider how you could use each type to help learners figure out new material.

1. Matching or Memory Games

2. Board Games

3. Jeopardy

4. Escape Room

5. Survival Games

6. Scavenger Hunt

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Examples

1. Core Values Matching Game

In a workshop (on critical thinking skills) for undergraduate English teaching majors in a future teachers program, I wanted to incorporate a list of twelve “core values” that are considered central to Chinese society. Since the values are taught in school and posted on placards throughout the country, students are quite familiar with them. Although many of the placards also contain the official English translation, I was unsure how familiar these were to students and considered ways for them to learn the English quickly without direct teaching. (They needed to be able to refer to the words in the following activities as we talked about values-level teaching.) The first link below will take you to a matching game which the students played in pairs (partly for logistics reasons). The second link goes to a document which includes the follow up activities: an objective exercise (matching) and a discussion (working with a partner to think of examples).

• Core Values Matching Game
• Core Values Activities

2. Books of the Bible Jeopardy

(If you are unfamiliar with this American TV game show, a search online will lead to free episodes you can watch.)

We talk a lot on Master Teaching about English language learning, sometimes expanding into other types of teaching. We don’t often talk about Bible learning although the same education principles apply. The link will take you to a Jeopardy style game for learning the books of the Bible, their categories, and basic content.

• Books of the Bible Jeopardy

While looking at the example, note how the game is used as a sense-making activity—after the initial set up, teams take over designing clues for subsequent rounds. Also pay attention to how collaboration is used to enhance learning and some of the ways the game is tweaked.

3. The True Blue Sentence Challenge (an online Escape Room)

The True Blue Sentence Challenge uses an online tool for designing various games and other activities including escape rooms. In a demonstration lesson in my teaching methodology course, students played this game in pairs on tablets. (The game is challenging enough that they welcomed collaboration and negotiation. Playing in pairs also solved a potential logistics problem–Students need access to more than one device to follow the directions in the game.) The first lesson reviews learners’ prior knowledge. No other information about sentence structure is directly taught to the students. Instead, through the use of colors during the game, they figure out different styles of complete and incomplete sentences. Follow up activities check their conclusions.

• The True Blue Sentence Challenge

After playing when I asked for feedback, one student who struggles to distinguish colors emphasized the importance of knowing individual needs before using different types of activities. We also discussed the possibility of changing the central color to a more culturally relevant one. In China, The Red-Hot Sentence Challenge might make more of an impression on students.

Further exploration

The online game tools mentioned in this post are listed here.

1. https://interacty.me/
2. https://genially.com/
3. https://www.superteachertools.us/
4. https://www.playfactile.com/

Try it out

We’re hoping to hear from you! What sense-making games have you used during the presentation phase of a lesson, and how? What types would you add to our list, or what examples could you share? You can respond in the comments below or in a private message through our Contact Us page.

Post Author

Melissa K. Smith

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Image by Beens_Photography from Pixabay.