Board Games, Burnout, and Breakthroughs
I mixed things up today and got some surprising results. Instead of sticking to my typical plans, I decided to have my students play board games, take notes, then complete a short assignment on the game they played. For the most part, I think it went swimmingly well. As I’ve said before, the first week is both exciting and a whole ton of work. That’s why I decided to change things up today.
By today, Wednesday, the kids all appeared drained and tired of sitting through so many classes. Taking a day to simply connect and do a short assignment allowed us all to relax a little.
Interesting enough, my plan worked fantastically for my 7th and 8th graders, but not so great for the 6th grades. I found that fact odd. So far, my 6th graders had been the perfect students. Obviously, I’m only going off of a few days of observations here, but I think the 6th graders respond better to strong structure, where the 7th and 8th graders do better when you give them a task, then walk around the room to help as needed.
A good example of this happened today in with one of my more rambunctious classes. (All 7th and 8th graders) Before playing board games, I asked them to write a small list of things you shouldn’t share online. The last two days, I tried delivering instruction to the entire class. Today, I gave them assigned tables, then gave a condensed version of the lesson to the tables individually.
It isn’t ideal—many parts of the lesson get lost, and each table gets a slightly different version, not to mention the fact that unattended tables rarely focus on anything productive. But still, it allowed me to get more through to them. Not perfect, but improving.
