Gamify your classroom by taking a worksheet and making it more fun!

We all have textbooks, quizzes, old worksheets, and tons of task cards that we can use to gamify our classroom! While these resources definitely are important to a student’s learning, sometimes you just need a little more fun! Take, for instance, HALLOWEEN DAY!

As I was thinking about what Halloween resources to create for my customers (the BEST customers in the whole world!!!) I couldn’t quite nail down a skill to include with the themed activity.  While my school is just beginning to teach multiplication, my friends in others schools and districts are doing all kinds of other things.  I wanted to make sure that whatever I created wasn’t just fun.  I wanted the “Halloweeniness” of my activity to sit back seat to the actual learning that would take place. 

That’s when I thought about making an activity that could be used with just about any subject or grade level.

I want to also spend some time showing you how you can create your own fairly quickly!

I’ll use candies for my example since it’s Halloween!

How can I Gamify This?

For this type of game, students will collect items based on questions they get correct.

First, think about an objective to the game.  In my Halloween game, the objective was to collect bones to make a skeleton.  For your activity, think about what students can get for answering a question correctly!  This is a great way to build interest or theme into your every day assignments.

Do you have a class that loves football? Let them collect team logos!  What about Harry Potter fans? Let them collect characters they love! You can integrate other subjects too.  For example, students can earn one part of the water cycle when they get a question correct.  Their objective would be to create a model of the entire water cycle!

Be creative!

So, How do I Make One?
Watch this video OR read the steps below!

Step 1:

Open a blank Google Slides.

Make your first slide a direction slide.
Just type the directions for playing.

Make your second slide the collection slide. 
The students will cut/paste their prizes here!

Then start creating your question slides! It’s so easy!

Step 2:

On your first question slide, you will create 4 text boxes for A,B,C,&D.

You can just make one and then copy/paste the others!

Choose the worksheet that you’d like to gamify!  You can use a single worksheet or page from a book.  You can even pick and choose questions from across several different pages from a text book.  You could use task cards! Just be specific with how you name your slides.  If you have a basic 10-question quiz, then name them Question 1, Question 2, etc.  You could be more specific for other types of work.  You could name the slide pg. 54 #5 or Task Card at Tamara’s Desk!   This is a very flexible way of gamification!

Step 3:

Now place your prize on the slide.  Use clipart you have or Google images you find.

Drag it over the correct answer for Question 1.

Duplicate this slide by clicking the icon in the slide sorter (on the left) and then pressing CTRL + D.  Repeat for the number of questions you have!

Step 4:

Starting with Question 2, delete the previous “prize” image and paste the new one on the slide. Drag it over the correct answer.

Repeat for all your questions. (I did 10!)

Step 5:

The last thing you’ll need to do is move your prize behind the answer box so students can see the right answer!

To do this click CTRL + ↓

(Hold it down until it disappears behind the answer choice.)

That’s It!

Sharing your game with your students is easy!  Just share in Google Classroom or…

Click on SHARE.

Then GET SHARABLE LINK.

Copy that link into a new browser tab.  You’ll want to backspace to delete the end of the URL up until the slash right before the word edit.  You want your URL to end with /copy instead of /edit?usp=sharing  (or whatever is there!)

This will make the students create their own copy of the activity.

See it up close! Watch this quick video.