review games Archives - Amazing Catechists

Catholic Words and Games, an App Review

Let’s face it, technology is not going away and kids love to play games using technology. But every now and then it’s be nice instead of playing Angry Birds they maybe played a game that they could learn from. Enter: Catholic Words and Games.
I downloaded it onto my iPhone and played, many times. There are five different games on the app: flash cards, memory match, tap it, spell it and name match. In theory, you could learn all the words using the Flash Card section and then move onto the other games. But that’s not how I roll. I just started playing. I made mistakes (on purpose people, c’mon now) and nothing bad happened. Sadly, I didn’t have anyone to play with but I think it’s great you can play the games with others.

Memory Match is my favorite and you can choose from six different sized boards, the more squares you choose the more challenging. The Name Match is fun as well. My least favorite is Spell it, mostly because I stink at spelling!
I would definitely have used this game with my children, instead, I’ll start having my faith formation students play with it while we wait for parents.
The app is available for both mobile and desktop devices, for windows and mac users, on iTunes or Google Play. For more information and a peek at graphics, go to the website, Catholic Words and Games.

Catechist Chat: From Aide to Apprentice

By Dorian Speed

Do your students know your aide’s name?

When you have to miss class, does the DRE scramble to come up with activities for your kids to do?

If you’re cringing with self-recognition, you’re not alone. I am your leader in the March of Ignoring Your Classroom Aide. And I should know better.

My first year of teaching, I had 42 kids in a class. I couldn’t send a student to the office until I had documented nine steps I’d taken in the disciplinary process beforehand, including a visit to the student’s home. I would have given anything to have an extra adult in the room to help me out.

So why is it so hard for me now to find ways to incorporate my aide into my class? We get along great, and she helps me “debrief” after class to talk about what worked and what didn’t. Still, I’m afraid the primary responsibilities I’ve given her are taking attendance and being the extra adult in the room with Safe Environment Training. I’d like for her role to become more of an apprentice, to the extent that she wants to become more involved.

Now, I am well aware that one of the benefits of being an aide versus the primary teacher in the room is that you can just show up and not have to plan ahead of time. So what I want is to find ways for her to have a greater leadership role in the classroom without placing an additional burden on her time outside of class. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. Aides can administer quizzes and tests. There’s no reason why I have to be the person saying, “Okay, do the best that you can, and remember what we talked about” while she is relegated to paper passer-outer. And, since I frequently have the kids grade their own quizzes, all my aide needs is an answer key and for me to be ready to clarify answers that the kids aren’t sure about. (I keep a class set of red pens and pass them out at the end of the quiz for the kids to grade with).

2. Aides can be the game show host or “Vanna” when it’s time for review. Games like Jeopardy or Challenger, especially once they’ve been played once with the kids, sort of run themselves. Kids seem to get more into it when there’s a comedy routine between the host and the scorekeeper as they’re playing. Again, all the aide needs is the answer key, and for me to be ready to jump in as needed.

3. Aides can be the primary teacher for a given topic. If she’s interested, I would love to have my aide be the lead teacher at times. It requires lots of advance notice, supplying her with the materials I’ve found useful in the past, and my own willingness to hand over the keys to the Mercedes that is my class.

There’s the real problem – I love teaching, love planning, and like the illusion of control. I’ve been a mentor teacher to student teachers in the past and enjoyed the process of helping new teachers hone their skills, but it was always hard to take myself out of the picture and let the student teacher shine. Yet treating our aides like apprentices is one of the best ways we can recruit new catechists. And, really, would you want to sit at the back of the room with the roll book and watch me blab away at teenagers for an hour every Wednesday?

Erm…don’t answer that. But do tell us – What’s your working relationship with your aide like? How involved is your aide, and how happy are you both with that arrangement?

Catechist Chat will be an ongoing series of posts for teachers in religious education programs. It is based on my personal experience and not on any statistical evidence of the effectiveness of my advice. Suscribe to my feed to follow along, and Caveat lector, which is Latin for “your mileage may vary.”

Click here to read other entries in the series, and be sure to follow Catechist Chat on Facebook! You can also sign up for my email list, and I’ll send you resources, including non-PDF versions of the activities I post (which means you can edit them in Microsoft Word to customize them for your own students).

Catechist Chat: Challenger Game

By Dorian Speed

Here’s a printable version of the directions for how to use the Challenger Game to teach a lot of material in a short window of time. (a.k.a., this post, minus parenthetical snark).

Well, what would you like first? The clever and effective technique for passing along a lot of information in a short time, the educational gobbledygook, or the explanation of why this technique was an EPIC FAIL during Wednesday’s class?

Really? Start with the bad news? It’s like that, is it? Well, let me just say that sometimes, “do as I say, not as I do” is actually pretty excellent advice. So, when I say we all should assign the students to groups instead of letting them pick their partners, or assess them only on what they should know, or set reasonable lesson planning goals, maybe I should myself follow some of these suggestions. At least one.

Having said that.

Okay, requisite edu-speak: “Do you remember what it’s called, the thing with the hierarchy…facts on the bottom, it’s a pyramid, then critical thinking…not Maslow.” (sound of Googling) BLOOM’S TAXONOMY!” (My husband loves these little chats we have).

They can’t really have effective conversations and think critically about a topic if they don’t have a good foundation in the facts. This game accomplishes that in a relatively short period of time, although not such a short period of time that you should attempt two rounds of it in one class session. On, say, Wednesday, November 18 of this year.

The game is called “Challenger.” It works best if you give the kids an overview of the subject matter and then use the game to reinforce and provide more details. I’m going to use the version of the game I created for my high school Scripture class, covering the periods from the Exodus through the conquest of Canaan. For simplicity’s sake and to plow through the material, I’d usually start by handing out a blank Study Question sheet with 20 questions, and a dry, fact-filled handout that provides the answers. You could do this game using the section review questions in a textbook just as easily. I think it works best if you focus initially on “just the facts” and then come back via another activity to say, “okay, what’s the significance of all this?”

So, here’s my Exodus Study Question handout and the accompanying Exodus through Conquest information sheet. (If you notice errors, let me know.) You could do this part a few ways – use the information sheet for your own reference as you deliver the answers to the Study Questions via lecture, let them work in teams to answer the questions – up to you. This part’s pretty boring. You could spice it up with lasers, but the point is to initially expose them to the information so that they can play the game.

Next, put them in mixed-ability groups of three. You can have a couple of pairs, but what you really want are groups of three. These are their Study Teams. Give each group a manila envelope that contains three things:
1. an answer key (Exodus-Conquest answer key – two to a page)
2. the study questions, cut into individual strips (one per strip), (Exodus-conquest example – two to a page), and
3. the Challenger rules

The purpose of the Study Teams is to teach/reinforce the material. Give the kids about 10-15 minutes in these groups. Their goal is to make sure that their fellow Study Team members really, really know the material. I like this part because you can walk around the room, answering questions, listening in on their conversations. Something about the tactile aspect of having the questions on individual strips instead of one big worksheet makes them participate more actively.

While they’re in their Study Teams, make up new Challenger Groups. A Challenger Group is composed of three people of similar ability from three different Study Teams. I find it’s easiest to write the kids’ names on the board while they’re in their study teams and then quickly make up the Challenger Groups – because, if I make them up ahead of time, it will turn out that several kids will be absent and I’ll have to redo them. So, for example, if my study teams were:

Red Team: RedGenius, RedProdigy, and RedNovice
Blue Team: BlueGenius, BlueProdigy, and BlueNovice
Green Team: GreenGenius, GreenProdigy, and GreenNovice (Going for the nerdiest team names of all time, here).

Then the Challenger groups would be:
RedGenius versus BlueGenius versus GreenGenius
RedProdigy versus BlueProdigy versus GreenProdigy
RedNovice versus BlueNovice versus GreenNovice

See?

So, after the Study Teams have had 10-15 minutes to prepare, announce that it’s time to move to Challenger Teams. Then, give the Challenger Teams 10-15 minutes to go through the questions. Here are the rules:

¨ There are three roles within the group. Each player should choose one of the following to begin:

Ø CONTESTANT: This student draws a question from the envelope, reads it aloud to the group, and gives the answer he/she believes is correct.

Ø CHECKER: This student uses the answer booklet to check the answer and tell the group if it is correct.

Ø CHALLENGER: This student may answer the question if the “Contestant” responds incorrectly.

¨ The rules are as follows: The Contestant keeps the strip of paper if he/she is correct. If not, the Challenger may answer and keep the strip of paper. If neither one is correct, the Checker reads aloud the correct answer and PUTS THE STRIP BACK IN THE ENVELOPE. The question will be drawn again later in the game.

¨ After each question, students rotate roles in a clockwise direction.

¨ Keep track of the number of slips each student earns as the game progresses.

And that’s how it goes. At the end of the 10-15 minute game period, tally up how many points each individual student earned, and then announce which Study Team earned the most points (by adding up the members’ individual points). I then reward the top Study Team with something like getting to skip a question on a quiz or candy, whatever motivates them.

I’m going to write up a printable, more thorough explanation of the game with pictures. So – what questions should I address? Here’s a printable version of this post, minus sarcastic comments.

Oh – real fast. If you have kids in two-person Study Teams, you need to make it a fair competition against the three-person Study Teams. What I do is average the two students’ scores and multiply that by 3. Make sense?

Same if you have a two-person Challenger Group. They’ll go through the questions more quickly, making it easier for them to earn more points relative to kids in 3-person groups. So I multiply each person’s tally by 2/3.

Please, ask questions in the comments! The explanation was lengthy, but the only real prep work is setting up the questions and answers on strips and cutting them up. If you have a Teacher’s Edition and a Section Review, it’s even easier. I like to run these off on different colors of cardstock, so that if there’s a question strip found on the floor afterwards, I can easily know which envelope it came from – and the cardstock makes them more durable.