You’re Bluffing!

This is a study game that some of my fellow reading teachers taught me at LMS last year. I used it to good effect with my sophomores this year, and thought I’d share it. It’s good for any subject, as far as reviewing facts goes, and I think you could easily adapt it for math problems as well. It’s also a fun “rainy day” activity if you make a list of fun/silly trivia questions.

Bluff takes a few minutes to teach to your kids, and seems to work better if you do a practice round before you start. It often requires a fair amount of guidance from you at first to make sure everyone understands how it works. But once your students know how to play, it’s terrific!

HOW TO PLAY “BLUFF”

PREPARATION: Come up with a numbered list of questions that you want to review. The number of questions should be a square or the product of two near numbers (for example, 36 questions, or 48 questions) because they’ll be associated with a grid. Draw a grid on the board (or make a PowerPoint or transparency) with the same number of spaces as you have questions, and number them.

OPTIONAL SUPPLIES:
Three poker chips or other tokens for each student.
Egg timer.
Prizes.

RULES

1. Once the question is asked, players have 5 seconds to decide whether or not to stand.
2. Once the question is asked, no one can speak except for the people who are selected to answer. Talking causes cheating and can result in the forfeit of points or turns.
3. Once your bottom leaves the chair, you’re standing and can’t sit back down.
4. Optional rule: Once someone is selected to answer a question, they have ___ seconds to answer.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Divide the students evenly into two teams. Arrange their seats so that they are in symmetrical blocks or lines (so that you can tell which student is next).

2. The first student on Team A chooses a number off the grid. Erase that number. That number corresponds to a question on your list.

3. Ask that question to Team B and begin the 5-second countdown (using fingers).  

• Students on Team B should stand up if they know the answer.
• The number of students who stand up is the number of points that the question is worth. If ten people stand, the question is worth ten points. If only one person stands, the question is worth only one point.
• Because of this, it is often in your team’s interest for you to stand up even if you don’t know the answer.

4. The student from Team A who selected the question now gets to pick one of the standing students to answer the question. S/he is trying to pick the person who is least likely to get the question correct.

• If the chosen answerer gets the question right, the team wins the number of points equal to the number of students who stood up – SKIP TO STEP #6
• If the answerer gets the question wrong, the team wins nothing – GO TO STEP #5

5. If Team B gets the question wrong, the person from Team A who picked the question and the answerer has the opportunity to answer the question correctly. If s/he can do so, the points that would have gone to Team B go to Team A instead.

6. Repeat steps 2-4, with the teams switching roles.

7. Keep going, moving down the line so that each student has a turn to pick the question and the answerer.

The game is over when you are out of questions or when you are out of time.

VARIATION #1: A wrong answer results in a loss of points equal to the grid number of the question asked. This creates a higher-drama, wildly-vacillating game.

VARIATION #2: To keep weaker students from being harassed, or stronger students from being ignored, give each student 3 poker chips which must be clearly displayed on their desk. Each time they are chosen to answer a question, they turn in a poker chip. This ensures that each student is called on only three times.

Two Online Games for Word Power

If you’re teaching spelling, you’ll probably find something useful at the attractively designed Spelling City.

Plug in your spelling words, and then practice using a wide variety of Flash games (word search, match-it, hangman, an alphabetizing game, word-scrambles, sentence completion, missing letters, crosswords). The website will also create an audio Flash spelling test that says the word and a sentence so that you can type the correct spelling into a form. A fun way to practice spelling!

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Boost your verbal-linguistic intelligence with Must Pop Words, the game that you’d get if your Scrabble board drank way too much Red Bull.

Letter bubbles fall from the top of the screen; you type words as quickly as you see them, and the used-up letters disappear. You get points for the words, with opportunities for bonus points. As in Tetris, you’re trying to keep the screen from filling up. Addictive, infuriating, and awesome.

Golden Tickets: A Recipe for an Awards/Management System

Ingredients:

• one roll of raffle tickets, gold/yellow in color
• an enormous pickle jar for each class period, cleaned and labeled
• an even larger receptacle for the full body of your students
• grade-boosting coupons (“Get Out of Assignment Free,” “Add 10% to Any Score,” etc.)
• dollar store trinkets

Preparation:

1. Give one ticket to each student.
2. Explain to them that tickets will be awarded for any number of reasons – having great insight, showing up especially prepared, improvement, excellent score on exam, being on task, etc.
3. Show them their class’s pickle jar and demonstrate the process of writing their name on the ticket and dropping into the jar.
4. Allow them to practice step 3 with their ticket.
5. Explain that each fortnight (hey look, a vocab word) you’ll pull a ticket or two from the jar. The owners of those tickets will receive a prize – one of the aforementioned coupons, or their choice of doo-hickey from a bin of goodies.
6. Begin the term by distributing tickets liberally (but appropriately). Become stingier with tickets as term goes on.
7. After each fortnight drawing, dump all tickets into the larger receptacle. At the end of the year, one student (not one from each class) will win a more substantial prize, at your discretion.

Variations:

• Use a double roll of tickets, and require them to keep track of their half of the ticket in order to win their prize. Teaches responsibility, makes drawing-day more interactive, also makes drawing-day more time-consuming.
• Don’t empty out the pickle jar after each drawing. Increases odds for students who are consistently “good”; decreases odds overall for other students, especially those who did something unexpectedly awesome.
• Sing “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket” every time you hand one out. Demonstrates confidence and cross-curricular connections. Makes you look like a dork, and may highlight poor singing skills.