A.V.I. - The Super Game

A.V.I. (Age-Value-Items) is an absolute must-have in your repertoire of learning games. A.V.I. can be played by 2 to 20 players (or more). It is suitable for ages 12 to adult. Once the materials are prepared, they may be used over and over. A.V.I. is a game of infinite possibilities. It can be used in a variety of formal and informal educational settings - classrooms, youth groups, madrichim training, teacher training, parent education, adult education.

MATERIALS for a group of up to 10 individual players or 20 players playing in pairs:
slips of paper in three different colors
three manila envelopes

PREPARATION:
Label the first envelope "Age." On each of 10 slips of paper of one color, write a different age or age group.
Examples - 4th graders, 2-year olds, kindergarten, senior adults, parents of B'nai Mitzvah students, college freshmen, etc.

Label the second envelope "Value." On each of 10 slips of paper of a second color, write a different Jewish Value (think Mitzvot and the Ten Commandments).
Examples - welcoming visitors, not stealing, repairing the world (Tikun Olam), observing Shabbat, honoring parents, preserving the earth, giving Tzedakah, etc.

Label the third envelope "Items." You will need 50 items for 10 individual players or 10 pairs of players. "Items" can be almost any object or activity. Give free rein to your imagination. Write each of the 50 items on slips of paper of a third color.
Examples - a pizza box, an Elmo puppet, an Etrog, plastic dinosaurs, marbles, a rainbow, a hike in the woods, a diamond, safety pins, planting a garden, a ball of yarn, a deck of cards, a trip to the zoo, a can of Kosher chicken soup, etc.
(Brainstorming the 50 items is a fun group project.)

DIRECTIONS:
Pass the envelopes to each player or pair of players, who select one slip (sight unseen) from the "Age" envelope, one slip from the "Value" envelope, and 5 slips from the "Items" envelope. The object of the game is for each player or pair of players to design a way to teach the Jewish value selected, to the age group selected using the 5 items selected.
Set a time limit of 10-15 minutes.
Then, the players share their teaching designs, so that all can enjoy and learn from the variety of creative responses. It's helpful to have a moderator who directs the game, calls on each player or pair to share, and provides positive feedback.
At the end of the game , the moderator collects the slips of paper, sorts them by color, and returns them to the appropriate envelopes ready to be used again.

Our Director of Life Long Learning presented the A.V.I. game at our first faculty meeting. It was a marvelous ice breaker, team builder, and game model for future use. The teaching ideas generated were imaginative and resourceful. A.V.I. was an excellent way to get acquainted with our colleagues and to appreciate their ingenuity.

Now, it's your turn! Below are the slips which my partner and I pulled from the envelopes:
Age - preschool
Value - not bearing false witness
Items - barbed wire, aleph-bet magnet letters, thumbtacks, yellow tile squares, a 1969 box of matzah

Go for it!

Treasure Hunt Variations

Shabbat Shalom. To complete the description of the Treasure Hunt game, here are 2 variations.

This is a good Holiday activity that can be part of a class celebration.In advance of the actual celebration, give each student small (2"x1.5") post-it notes and ask the students to draw symbols of the Holiday you're celebrating (apple, lulav, menorah, dreidel, almond tree, etc) on the post-it notes. Collect the post-it notes, but don't tell the students what you plan to do with them. Before your class celebration, stick the notes around the classroom, on wall displays and also on objects. All notes should be visible, so that students don't have to move anything or climb on anything...visible, but not obvious, as this is a searching game. On "Go!" the students search and gather as many notes as they can find in a few minutes - set a timer. The student who gathers the most notes wins. The class can follow the game with a discussion of the meaning of the symbols on the notes.

This version of Treasure Hunt requires the students to tell where they find the treasures - in Hebrew. The goal is to give students a chance to practice Hebrew vocabulary including prepositions. Flashcards with Hebrew nouns that the students are studying are the treasures. There should be one flashcard for each student. Place the flash cards on the walls and on objects in the class. Each student finds a flashcard and tells where he/she found it. For example, a student finds the flashcard with the word "yeled" taped to the chalkboard. The student says, "Yeled al ha luach." Another student finds a flashcard with the word "sefer" tacked next to an Israeli flag on the wall. The student says, "Sefer al yad ha degel." This game works best when many of the objects in the classroom (luach, degel, kiseh, shulchan, chalon, etc) have been labeled since the first day of class.

You can probably suggest other types of classroom search games. Please share them in your comments.

More to come...Back-to-School preparations continued

Treasure Hunt Re-visited

I've been thinking about my post of 8/4/10 where I describe the Treasure Hunt game. The description sounds a bit complicated, but really Treasure Hunt is simply an interactive form of a matching or fill-in-the-blanks exercise. Instead of completing a pencil and paper matching or fill-in exercise, students get to walk around and hunt for the matches or fill-in words which are taped, tacked, or stapled to classroom displays. Students have a chance to move around and perhaps work with a partner. As a bonus, while discovering a picture or word card camouflaged in a display, the student will also notice the display, itself.

There is a point that some of you may raise. Doesn't a game like Treasure Hunt require a substantial amount of preparation time on the part of the teacher? The teacher has to make word cards or cut out pictures, and devise a set of fill-in statements or items to match up. Then, the teacher has to go to the classroom early to hide the pictures or cards in the displays.
Yes, it's true. Teacher time is necessary to prepare the Treasure Hunt game. It's alot quicker to say, "Complete page 12 in your workbook," - and students can certainly learn from workbook activities.
Think of games such as Scavenger Hunt and Treasure Hunt as experiences, rather than tasks. These games are meant to be sprinkled occasionally into the mix of activities featured in a lesson plan. The pictures and cards can be re-used in future years when similar topics are taught. I actually lay the pictures on a sheet of copy paper and make a color copy, in case some are damaged or lost. This way, I won't have to find them and cut them out again. The cards can also be copied.

Students enjoy these games. They have a positive Jewish Educational experience, work off some energy, and socialize a bit. Providing active games distinguishes their Jewish classroom from many of their secular classrooms. We're shaping an environment different in tone from the secular classes they've attended all day before arriving at religious school.

On a more sobering note, there is the issue of compensation for preparation time, such as that required for setting up the Scavenger Hunt and Treasure Hunt games. Many Jewish educators, especially those working in synagogue (supplementary) schools, are compensated only for the time they're actually teaching. There is no compensation for prep time. This is a complex topic worthy of more in-depth consideration. It deserves its own post and I will return to it in the future.

More to come...variations on Treasure Hunt.

Treasure Hunt

Ahoy Mateys! Time for a treasure hunt!

In the Treasure Hunt game, students examine classroom displays very carefully as they race to find hidden "treasures." The treasures are small pictures or little cards representing material the students have studied.The pictures or cards are tacked or taped to various displays. The pictures might depict foods whose Hebrew names students have learned. The cards might contain names of figures in Jewish History or names of the Holidays. In each case, students are given a list of words (in Hebrew or English), definitions, or descriptions that match the information conveyed by the hidden pictures or cards. Students hunt for the treasures that match the items on their list.

Some examples will make the process clearer.

Among the wall displays, you might hide small pictures of a chair, a book, an eraser, and other common classroom items whose Hebrew names the students have learned. (Use pictures from store flyers advertising Back-to-School sales.) Students receive a list of the names of these items in Hebrew. Students search for the pictures of the items which illustrate the Hebrew words. In doing this, they are demonstrating that they know that "kiseh" means chair, "sefer" means book, "machak" means eraser, and so on. When they find a picture, they either remove it from the display and tape it next to the word on their list or write the name of the item (in English) next to the Hebrew word on the list and note where they found the picture.
As an added challenge, pictures may be hidden which don't have a matching Hebrew word on the list.

An additional example -
The students are given a list of statements describing aspects of Holiday celebrations, such as "We build and decorate a temporary structure." The students examine the wall displays and one student finds, taped to a corner of a satellite map of Israel, a card with the word "Sukkot" in Hebrew or in English. The student either detaches the card, which is lightly taped to the map or records the word "Sukkot" next to the appropriate statement on the list and notes where the word card was found.

You might hide 10 items and give the students a brief time, say, 4 minutes, to find as many hidden treasures (ie. pictures or cards) as possible. The student who finds the most, wins.

Treasure Hunt is a versatile game format which can be used with a variety of topics in Hebrew or English. It's a lively review exercise to begin or end a class. Be sure to allow students time to share the treasures they've found, so that all students hear the correct matches for the items on their lists.

More to come...Treasure Hunt variations

Classroom Scavenger Hunt

It's the first day of religious school and you've put alot of effort into classroom displays. Do the students ooh and aah over your creativity? Do they eagerly examine every sign, flash card, and poster you've so carefully placed? No way! They're busy meeting and greeting their classmates and comparing ipods or smart phones or whatever neat gadgets they have crammed into their backpacks.

Try this! Once you've welcomed your students, taken attendance, and, perhaps, recited the Bracha for Torah study, it's time for a classroom scavenger hunt based on your terrific (and informative) displays. Students can participate individually or, as a team-builder, they can work in groups of 2 or 3. I let them "hunt" in table groups, so that they get acquainted with classmates they've been assigned to sit with. Each student receives a sheet with statements to be completed. The statements refer to some element of the displays. In order to complete the statements, students must look closely at wall, door, bulletin board, and project display board displays. The first group to correctly complete all the statements wins a prize (lollypops, for example). While each student has a sheet, the group as a whole need only produce one correctly completed sheet to win.
To make the scavenger hunt even more challenging, you might require students to hunt silently - using only gestures to lead members of the group to answers in the displays.

Here are some examples of statements that I've used in classroom scavenger hunts:
-Penguins live way down south in (Hebrew)_________________ (The correct fill-in is found on a Hebrew language map of the world and I've noted in the statement that the missing item is to be written in Hebrew.)

-The Hebrew letter dalet looked like this____________ in classical Greek script. (The fill-in comes from a chart showing how several alphabets evolved.)

-The second Parsha in the First Book of the Torah is___________________ (The fill-in comes from a poster showing the Parshot in each Book of the Torah.)

The amount of time you plan for the scavenger hunt will determine the number of statements to include. I plan to include 15 statements which should take 10-15 minutes to complete. I tell the students that they have a ten minute time limit.

If no group has completed the sheet in the time allotted, the group with the highest number of correctly filled-in statements wins. Ta Da! Now the stage is set for learning from displays.

Once a group has won, we all have a snack and turn our attention to the lesson, where references will be made to the displays that students have just examined.

There is a variation on the scavenger hunt game which involves searching for "treasures" hidden among the displays. More about this in future posts.