As we continue to struggle with student engagement, gamification has become an intriguing way to make a boring activity more enticing to 21st century learners.  We used this game with 11th grade students reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest , by Ken Kesey in hopes of increasing their level of participation during book discussions. I used the Instructional Practices Inventory: Using Student Learning Assessment to Foster Organizational Learning to help identify a problem area in my classroom. I used Alison King’s research on Enhancing Peer Interaction and Learning Through Reciprocal Questioning and developed a set of question stems to scaffold their learning; some of hers and some I thought up on my own. Students were given time in small groups, prior to the mini competition, to develop questions using the stems. The rules of the game listed below are simple:

(+)The goal of the game is to collect the most points by exhibiting the following behaviors:

1. Ask questions that stimulate discussion.

2. Respond to questions with complete responses.

3. Reference quotations when asking or responding.

(-)Points will be taken away for the behaviors listed below:

1. Side conversations & off topic comments

2. Responding without being recognized

3. Asking questions that have one right answer

ALSO…

Points are earned as a group

The same person may not ask two questions in a row.

A lull of more than 1 minute will result in a loss of points for all teams.

If the group wants an instructor to respond to the question at a later time then a team member can write the question down for us to revisit as a class after the discussion.

Question stems:

1. Can you explain why…?

2. What do you think would happen if…?

3. What is the difference between…?

4. How are _____and _______similar…?

5. What do you think might happen because of…?

6. How is ________ related to the time period this was written?

7. Which is better…?

8. How is ______ related to ________ that we studied earlier?

9. Which quote supports______ and why?

10. Why do you think the author…?

This activity was documented on video but I promised the kids I wouldn’t be publishing it to the web. The results were amazing! I really didn’t expect such a simple intervention to lead to such incredible results. My co-teacher and I were very proud.