Gamified Classroom: John Meehan

I presented at a conference in June, and one of the workshops I attended taught how to gamify your classroom. Gamification in education is becoming more popular, and I have known teachers who set up their curriculum like this, but I had never heard this term before. John Meehan’s workshops were amazing, plus he has a book coming out in a few weeks! While I might not set up my year-long curriculum as a game, I will use day-long gamifications to boost practice activities for students.

What is a Gamified Classroom?

A gamified classroom turns activities in any level class into a game. It is not taking a game such as Monopoly and incorporating your curriculum into that game, but rather taking your curriculum and incorporating aspects of gaming (competition, energy, race). In John Meehan’s workshop, we spent the first 90 minutes racing through the game ourselves. The game had 8 challenges, and each challenge sheet include a QR code as well as written instructions. Rather than detailing those challenges, I’ll link to his website with tons of resources, and detail my own Latin challenge creation below.

A Latin Gamified Classroom

Here is how I created my own version:

• Students are in teams

• Teams roll a colored die to determine which color challenge their team completes first

• The instructions for each challenge are on that color’s challenge sheet

• The teams can only work on one challenge at a time

• The teacher answers no questions after instructions are given, but each team is given 2 oracle cards and may ask questions using those

During the race, the students complete a total of 6 challenges. Here are the 6 challenges I created:

Gamified Classroom Challenges

1. Escape Room Google Forms (QR scan option): 3 teammates must unlock all keys

2. Quizizz code (or QR scan option): 2 teammates must earn 100% score

3. Annotate a picture: Label 10 items within a picture using Latin vocabulary

4. Empathy organizer based on Polyphemus after reading a Latin passage

5. EdPuzzle: 2 teammates must earn 100% on multiple choice questions throughout the video

6. Story composition: Given 4 pictures, compose a 5 sentence story that uses every Latin noun case.

The Element of Chance

Students love when there is an element of chance in a classroom game. It prevents the team in last place from giving up, and it keeps the first place team on their toes. Here are the elements of chance Meehan provided:

• To begin, and to decide which team is which color, teams assemble a 50 piece lego set and click in their lego centurion into a lego magnet on the white board that they will move as they progress through the game challenges. This also helps stagger starting times!

• Power-Ups: After completing a challenge, the team earns a power-up. I created 4 power-ups for my game: Medusa, Polyphemus, and Apollo all slow down your opponents, while Minerva aids your team.

John gave us more free resources than I could ever use in a lifetime, under the condition that when we recreate them we share them for free, so here is my creation!

Click here for the free Latin gamified classroom resource!

Click here for John Meehan’s website with tons of free resources on classroom gamification!