I had a check-for-understanding quiz game as part of my lesson for today. Such an activity is usually pretty fun and popular, and I always add a little extra incentive by promising a piece of candy to the winners. Today, because it was newly-introduced material, I had the students work in teams with a single device so that they could talk and use their notes to answer the questions.
Sometimes in these quiz games, if a player or team gets too far behind, they give up and disengage from the activity, which is understandable and a flaw in this particular version of the gamification of learning. To compensate, I often challenge the group to answer a certain number of questions with 100 percent accuracy, that is everybody must answer the question correctly to get credit toward their collective goal.
Today's game started off easy, and my challenge was easy, too. The class quickly answered 6 questions perfectly, earning each person a piece of candy. But then I upped the ante by offering double or nothing. A majority of the teams had to accept my challenge for it to go, and it was fascinating to hear the kids debate the classic dilemma of a bird in the hand versus two in the bush.
In both cases today, the classes accepted my challenge but failed to bring home the victory. Of course, I knew the last questions were harder, but even though they lost, they were all in right up until the last, and they even listened carefully to my explanation and clarification between questions, which as far as I was concerned?
Was win-win.
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