GEN: End of school crazies

[Gayle Hodur <ghodur@REDSHIFT.COM>]

It's that last couple of weeks of school and everyone is nuts. I didn't
think I could find anything to keep my middle schoolers happy, but
amazingly, I did! Our family (and friends) have always played games, and I
don't think most kids get to do it enough. I was desperate for a "lesson"
now that checkouts are finished, so I pulled out my travel edition of
Outburst and thought, "now how can I fix this so it's not a free-for-all."
What I did was to have each table (about 5 or 6 kids) as a team, but have
everyone play at the same time and just record their points. I gave each
team a pad of paper, a pencil, and had them assign one person to write
while everyone else provided the responses (quietly, so other teams
couldn't hear their answers.) I also found a cool little timer thingie on
the net that puts REALLY BIG numbers on the screen and then counts down,
playing a sound when time's up. I turn my circ. monitor around so they can
all see it, announce the topic, and start the timer. They loved it. I even
had teachers love it so much that they begged to come in and play when it
wasn't their class time.

For most kids, you'll need to use Travel Outburst, Outburst Jr., or the
most recent Outburst game, all of which have easier topics than either of
the two original Outburst games. Also the topics seem to be more "kid
oriented." If you haven't played it, here's the gist. You get 1 minute to
come up with as many answers as possible that relate to the given topic
(for instance, Things found at a Wedding.) Your aim is to match the 10
items on the topic card. Correct answers don't count if they don't match
the card, so you need to guess as many as possible. This is intended as a
very loud party game, but writing down the answers works just as well, if
not better. The timer thingie that I found is shareware for Win95 and is
called CDTimer. I just did that for laughs, and the kids loved it, but you
could always just assign a student to turn over a plain old egg timer and
let everyone know when the sand runs out.

If you have time, a great extension would be to have kids come up with
their own topic cards and play against another class. This way you could
get great results with Social Studies topics, Lit. topics, and anything
else they can make a list for. Have fun!

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Gayle Hodur                             Snail Mail:
District Librarian                      Main Street Middle School
Soledad Unified School District         441 Main Street
(408) 678-3923                          Soledad, CA  93960
ghodur@redshift.com

Pager Screen Name:
UnGayle (IM and ichat)
10682291 ICQ

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