Come Tuesday, I am officially on summer break. I know that many of you finished classes a week or two earlier, but there are still a few of you that have another week or two to go. I’m not sure about you, but I find the last day of class to be a bit awkward. You can’t really teach anything new, but you also don’t want the students just sitting around. Also, my classroom does not have air conditioning and is on the second story of a brick building facing the sun. It gets hot. Really hot. So hot that I don’t want to be in my classroom with 25 sweaty bodies, and they don’t want to be in my classroom with 25 sweaty bodies either. So, what to do? My answer...Goose Chase. If you have not yet tried Goose Chase, now is the time! I originally learned about this from Maris Hawkins, thank you, Maris! Goose Chase is an app that allows you to create a (wild) “goose chase” for your students. As a teacher, you design tasks (called missions in the game) for them to complete, and they run around to do so. Therefore, 25 sweaty kids out of my classroom, out having fun. I have used this on the last day of school for a couple of years now, and have had great success. The students are able to demonstrate what they have learned, in a fun, creative and competitive way. Here is how I set it up. First, visit the Goose Chase site and create and account. It takes 30 seconds, and is so worth it! With an account, I am able to create missions for students to complete. I add these missions on the Goose Chase website. I have found that 18 is a pretty decent amount for students to complete in a 30-40 minute period. The missions I create ask students to submit a photo or a video in order to complete the mission. As I am doing a Goose Chase game at the end of the year, I set up my missions to review what we have been doing all year in the classroom. Below are a few examples (I have translated them to English, but students read them in the Target Language):
As I create each mission, I assign a point value to each mission. Honestly, this is completely random number, don’t stress too much when deciding on points. After I have all the missions in my mission bank on the website, I now have the option to pre-set teams or allow individuals to registers. I set pre-set the teams. Using the EDU version, I can set up to 5 teams. I set them and name them A, B, C, D, and E, just to make things simple on my end. Also, by setting up teams, only one student on each team needs to download the Goose Chase app as opposed to all students downloading the app to their phone. Yes, students do have to download an app to play, but I have never had anyone complain about this at all. Plus, having only one student download the app is more equitable for the students that do not have a smartphone. The last day of class, when we are ready to play Goose Chase, I tell students that they will be playing a team scavenger hunt game. I run through my behavior expectations - teams MUST stay together, teams must not disrupt classes, be respectful, etc. I put them into teams and ask one person in each group to download the app on their smartphone. Students do not need to create an account to play, they can simply login as a guest. They will have to search for our game - provide them the game code to make this easy - and select a team. The app will then say “Waiting to Start.” Once all teams have reached this point, I choose how long I want the game to be active (usually 30 minutes), click “start game” on my computer, and the students are off to the races. The best part is that while they are out completing missions, I am getting a live activity feed on my computer of their mission submissions. I can see what team is completing which mission in live time. As the missions come in, I can add bonus points or subtract penalty points from each mission completed. I can also see a leaderboard so I know exactly what team has the most and least points. The students can also see this as well, so they know where they stand, and can make choices about which missions to prioritize per point value, if they want to. Once the game is over, students report back to my classroom for a quick debrief and (possibly) a prize for the winning team. This year, I made stickers that said “I am a winner!’ from old label stickers I had laying around. The kids were thrilled! If you have a few extra minutes to kill, you could project some of the videos that teams submitted for certain missions and have them vote on which was the best, most creative, silliest, etc. All in all, this is a great way to end the year. There is teamwork, collaboration, creativity, and a bit of fun competition. It is a positive way to send students off on their summer journeys.
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Jessie Oelke
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