The Book that Changed my Classroom

- February 01, 2018

The best decision I made when trying to decide to go with game based learning or to gamify my classroom was reading the book "Explore Like a Pirate." by Michael Matera. After researching and reading countless articles online, his book help clarify the difference between game base learning and gamifying the classroom, while also persuading me to Gamify my year long math class.
"Explore like a Pirate" is a fairly easy read and it gives you concise instructions on how to go about gamifying the classroom. It is set up very nicely that if you follow the directions things just start falling in place.
After I made the decision to gamify my math class I needed a starting point. "Explore like a Pirate" tells its readers to start with picking a theme. The theme can be per unit or a whole year it depends how you want to run your game. I teach 4th grade and one of the big things we do throughout the year is we have a week long celebration called "Pioneer Days". The students borrow clothes from the local historical society and they all dress up in pioneer clothes. To give it even a more authentic feel we walk them to our community building and hold pioneer school in one large room simulating how they would have had school in Pioneer Days and eat their sack lunches they brought from home. The students and parents absolutely love it and is one of the highlights of their 4th grade year.
When I had a little free time one day (I know, I know we never have any free time during the school day) I explained to my classes what I wanted to do and was trying to do. I opened up discussion of what would be an interesting theme to use (after all they are the ones that would be playing the game). They threw out many ideas, but one of them came up with cowboys because of our Pioneer Days. That got us started down the path of westward expansion, which in turn led to my current theme of the Oregon Trail.
I do not think I ever would came up with this idea on my own. I have been amazed at what student come up with given an opportunity. Once I had my theme chosen the rest started to fall in place.
If you decide to read it and like it. I highly recommend some of the other Pirate books as well.