#169: 4 whole-class recall games that will have students begging to learn right up until the summer break

Mentioned Resource: The Engagement Bundle

Engagement slumping? You're not alone. Whether you're in the final push to summer or just hitting that mid-year wall where motivation has quietly packed its bags, this episode is for you.

Claire shares four no-prep (or low-prep) whole class games that gamify your lessons, bring back buy-in, and make the last stretch of the year actually fun, for you and your students.

And yes, she's also addressing that "hard pass, kids don't need more dopamine" comment she got on Instagram. Spoiler: these aren't video games.

In this episode, Claire covers:

• Why engagement gets so hard towards the end of the year (and why it's not your fault)
• Why gamification is a great way to boost engagement 
• Why neurodivergent students thrive with novelty — and why what works for them works for everyone
• Four whole class games you can use today, no prep required: 

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

• Shop all resources
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• My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management 
• The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
• Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'

Connect with me:

• Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
• Check out my website

Transcript

Why Engagement Drops Over Time

Gamification Without The Screen Debate

Why Novelty Works And When

Game One Four In A Row

Game Two Fast Tic-Tac-Toe

Game Three Sync Or Swim

Game Four Capture The Flag

Engagement Bundle Plug And Wrap

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Hi there, teachers. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama, and a big old behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to because we're not bouncers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies, and I mean the things that we can actually do and action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables Podcast. Or maybe it's the first time you have been around these parts of the podcasting app. And if that is the case, then welcome. It is wonderful to have you here. My name's Claire, and on the Unteachables Podcast, we just talk about all of the things that make sense when it comes to classroom management that help you lead your room with more calm and credibility, uh, make you feel more in control of your practice and your space without, you know, sacrificing the kind, compassionate, wonderful teacher that I know you are if you're listening to this podcast. So welcome. It is wonderful to have you here. And on today's episode, I am going to be talking about, you know, that push to the summer break if you are in the northern hemisphere, or just like as you go through the year in general, engagement can really feel like, you know, it's just a slog. You can feel like it kind of becomes a bit of a pipe dream. You know, the kids know summer's close, you know summer's close, the year's been going on, and that motivation that's really carried you throughout the year, that, you know, that intrinsic motivation, like you want to get your job done, you want to do it well, and you know, your class is coming in, they still have some kind of buy-in, there's still things that are kind of grabbing them. All of that stuff can feel like it has just packed its bags towards the end of the year, but you've still got weeks to go. So I'm gonna put it right out there from the beginning of this episode that engaging a whole class, no matter where you are in the year, it's so hard. It's so tough. So today I wanted to share a few whole class games with you that are going to help you gamify your learning. It's going to add a bit of challenge, it'll add a bit of novelty, and just add a bunch of fun so you can feel a lot less like you're pushing that uphill all year long. So, especially for those of you who are in the rundown to summer, but no matter where you are in the school year, like this is going to be so beneficial. If you are experiencing any of the following challenges, you need to start to try to include a little bit of gamification. And these four games that I will be discussing in today's episode are perfect for it. Let's just say every lesson feels like it's dragging and you're not getting any real or authentic energetic engagement. It feels like it's really like drawing blood from a stone, like you might just get those blank faces. If you're running on empty, like the thought of trying to get through teaching content to that sea of blank stares is just draining. Or if you are feeling like those low-level behaviors are coming thick and fast because we're nearing the end of the year and there's chattiness and there's off-task behaviors and that high energy, it is really demoralizing. So if you're experiencing any of those challenges currently and you know it's because we're just losing that buy-in towards the end, or you're just losing that momentum because of where you are in the year, then you are definitely going to get something from this episode. And I am so excited to share these with you. First, I just want to preface this with something because I received a comment on Instagram saying, so I posted about these games, and someone said, like, hard pass, our kids don't need more video games, like they don't need their, like, they don't need to be flooded with more dopamine, you know, all of that stuff. So I really, really wanted to first acknowledge your potential hesitation with including more gamification in your classrooms. When students are already so dopamine-seeking in this day and age, they're always on screens. So I really wanted to clarify something before I went into this episode, which is these aren't video games. I wish I was that good at coding. I wish I was able to put together something that was that hectic, but it's not. These aren't video games, these are just like resource, like supplement resources that you can have there to support you to facilitate your lessons in a way that does include a little bit more excitement, a bit more novelty, and a bit more of that gamification. These are actually there to support students to collaborate, to have discussions, to problem solve together, to connect with each other. And they're actually gonna have a laugh along the way and get really into this. All of those things that I just said is everything that screen time actually takes away from us. So these four games that I will share, yes, of course, like if you want to create, you know, slides around these, you can, but you also don't have to. These don't have to be on a screen. These four games can be used wherever, whenever. You don't have to have the resources there necessarily like to project up on the screen. The reason this person said that was because I actually do have slides for each of these games to make it super easy for you, but you don't have to. Okay, let's go into a little bit about why these work. Our brains thrive on novelty, especially the brains of our neurodivergent students. And what works for our neurodivergent students is what is going to work well for everybody. They are the perfect way to embed a little bit of movement, of challenge, of you know, novelty and excitement into your lesson without having to spend like hours and hours actually pre-pro like pre-planning something. So, when to use these games. I'm gonna go over the games in a second, but whenever you want to make things a little bit more interesting, whenever you want to make things a little bit more exciting, when you know you have to do that test prep, or you want them to go through a worksheet or activity that they just did, and you cannot stand the thought of asking students questions and then just getting those blank stares and no hands up. When you want to do a bit of recall, you can adapt these games to absolutely anything. No matter who you teach, what you teach, you can use these games. And these are four out of the eight engaging recall games that I have available in my whole class engagement bundle. I couldn't share all eight with you here today because they do require a lot more scaffolding or prep. For example, some of the games that I have in my bundle are like click to reveal points. Like I have like this Mindsweeper inspired game because, you know, it was just such a fun little 90s memory to kind of bring in. But they're just ones like so, you know, I click like the little things and the boxes go away, and there's like points behind them, and there's like a mind behind one of them. It's just a lot of fun, but that requires a lot of work, and it did take me like a week to put together. Um, but these ones here are the ones you can do without any prep immediately, like just grab it and go. Um, but yeah, of course, if you want these as beautiful visuals and slides, you can grab them inside of my engagement bundle, and I'll pop the link in the show notes for you. That's just for anyone who really wants to go hard on the engagement front for the rest of the year and you need something to support you to do that. Okay, here we go. Here are the games. The first one is four in a row. So, like a connect four style game. So the goal is for students to answer correctly and be the first team to get four in a row on the board. So, how you will set this up is decide what content you're going to use. So you're gonna use like worksheet answers, recall questions, revision prompts, divide your class into teams and explain the instructions to them, and then give each team a set of post-it notes and get ready to go. Then how you'll play it is you will ask your students a question. Those students will discuss with their team and write their answer on a sticky note. When they have that answer, one runner from that team will bring it up to the board and place it on a Connect 4 board. So I've got a slide for this that you can use, but if you don't want to download that slide, you can literally just get your whiteboard marker and count 10 across and then like six up, and then just fill the board with circles. They'll put their post-it note and different colours, by the way. I probably should have said that, different color post-it notes for each of the groups. So one group might be blue, one group might be yellow, one group might be pink. Um, and they have to run up to the board and they, I mean, two groups is probably better for connect four, but they have to run up to the board and they have to place their when they, you know, come up, they have to place their post-it note on this the circle or the square that they want to make their play at. So that's their connect four piece. The goal would be to get all four in a row. They have to do it from top to bottom. I'm sorry, from bottom to top as well, just like the the game. You will check each round. So just say if the students placed their post-it note on the board and that was a wrong answer. You'd check those and go, oh, sorry, you've missed out your turn. So they'll get that piece taken off the board, which just adds a little bit more like competition to it because they're not just writing any old thing on the post-it note. They genuinely have to agree on an answer and run that up and put it on the board. Um, it just creates so much fun. If more, like the way that I kind of keep this under wraps as well, without the whole class kind of jumping up, is that number one, the teams must agree on an answer before sending up their runner. So they can't just like, you know, run up anything. And if more than one person in that group gets up to run, they'll lose a turn. So that's important to say as well. That's just how I keep everybody like, you know, playing by the rules, and I don't have like a free-for-all everybody standing up and running. So that is four in a row. The second game, which is quite similar to four in a row, is tic-tac-toe. But if you don't have my slide there for four in a row, it might be easier to play tic-tac-toe. So I have three um tic-tac-toe boards up on the whiteboard. So just like the, you know, the squares. Uh, so three across, three down. Every student, so I assign students with a group. So if you've got a smaller class, then you might only use like two of the tic-tac-toe boards. If you've got a bigger class, so for example, with 30 students, I'll have five students in each team, and then I'll assign them with a board. So um, you know, one, two, or three, that's going to be the board you're playing on. So rather than having one big Connect 4 board and it being like more of a whole class battle, this is really good if you want smaller groups working together because they can all be there, like, you know, placing their um sticky notes up. But the same thing. So ask a question. This is probably better for like shorter questions, like if you're a math teacher or you know, requiring like a one-word answer. Um, they write it up and they run it up to their particular boards. Uh, so that's a really good one just for like a more of a quick kind of like small group one. The next one is sync or swim. This doesn't require anything really. The whole premise of this game is to keep each of like so you're you're separating the two teams. I'm sorry, the class into two teams. They stand on each side of the room, create like a bit of a middle section. You can move the tables away, or you can just keep the the tables there. Depends on what your what your vibe is, what you want to do. Um, and each team takes turns answering questions. So you've got your questions there ready to go. Doesn't matter what questions they are, you take turns like asking each of those teams the question. If the team gets the answer correct, they choose a player from the other team to sink into the ocean. So that is like your no man's land in the middle, your ocean. So students go and sit back at a table. Uh if they get it incorrect, the team that got it incorrect then sink a player. Um, so the team with the most players left at the end wins. If the team gets it correct, they can choose a player from the other team to sync, but if they're really running low on players, they can actually choose to swim a teammate back into the game. You don't have to go until like one of the teams is completely out. You can just like end the game whenever, and just the team with the most players at the end of your questions or you know, whatever you want to do left at the end wins. I really like Sinkle Swim. It's a lot of fun and it does get students like really enthusiastically involved in what you're doing. The next one, the last one that I wanted to talk through was Capture the Flag. The goal for Capture the Flag is to work in teams and earn flags by answering questions correctly. The kind of like mystery part of it is that each flag, so you've got like different colored flags. So you can do this just by like having different colored post-it notes and putting them on the board. And each question that they get right, they just run up to the board and they grab a post-it note and they just have to choose a colour. Um, so each flag is worth hidden points, and the team with the highest total at the end wins. I like Capture the Flag because you can have as many teens as you want. You can have people working in twos, threes, fours. It doesn't really matter how many people you have. You can just like up the amount of flags that you have available. You can change the points. So you would choose how many points each of those flags is worth. I like doing positive points, but also negative points like plus 50 and then minus 50, minus 20, plus 70. Um, and then at the end you reveal how many points that each flag represents, and then they can like tally it up. Um, so I really like this one because when those points are revealed, it is a lot of fun. And I like games where any team can win. So even if a team has answered only two correct, they could actually win the game if a team that has like six correct um picked a couple of the flags that had minus numbers. So I really, really like um Capture the Flag for that reason. So my gosh, I'm losing my voice this episode. I have not taken a breath. So the other games I do have in that bundle, as I said, are more like click to reveal points, similar to Capture the Flag, um, but they do require a lot of prep in terms of like the actual resourcing that goes into them. However, they are really engaging visually. So if you do want to grab those other games and the games I've just mentioned and have like, because I've for each of those, I've got like student instructions, teacher instructions, visuals that you can like pop up on the board. Um, you can grab the link to that in the show notes. I'll pop that there for you. The engagement bundle also has like a bunch of other things that will get you through to the end of the year, like my engagement toolkit, which is like 62 prompts, which task students with what they need to do rather than saying, like, hey, who knows the answer to this? So that's amazing for whole class engagement in discussions. I've got my post-it notes, like my printable post-its that you can print out, and like it just adds novelty to absolutely everything that you're doing, and that's also another great way to get engagement right up until the end. Um, but if you just want to go and try one of those four out, please do. I just I'm so excited to let you like to hear how it goes if you do try one of those. Um, and pop into my Instagram and let me know. I'm always keen. Take a photo, like don't take a photo of your students, but you know, take a photo of the board or like sharing with me what you're doing and how it's working and how you're keeping students engaged to the last day. I am all here for it. I am so excited to hear about it, and I really hope that those four ideas help you just sprinkle a little bit of novelty engagement into your lesson. And don't listen to anybody who says that you can't do that because they shouldn't be like needing a hit of dopamine because they are children at the end of the day, and we teach students who have a wide variety of backgrounds, and some of them really genuinely need that bit of novelty in order to really engage and get the buy-in. So don't be afraid of doing things that do require a little bit of challenge. Uh, yeah, that's it. I will see you next week at the same time on the Unteachables podcast. Bye for now, lovely teachers.