Recently: We have been busy doing BreakoutBox games for a variety of classes throughout the New Palestine elementary and Sugar Creek elementary. Over the past three weeks, we've been able to go to two class rooms and scheduled many more for the next several weeks. We've also been able to expand our game to other elementary schools in New Palestine, starting at NPE and started going to Sugar Creek. We were able to go to Mrs. Polster's class last Thursday at NPE and Mrs. Cannon's class at Sugar Creek. Mrs. Polster's Class: Mrs. Polster's class was the last 4th grade class left at NPE, and it ended up being a great success. The two groups we had were challenging at times, but for the most part were all engaged and wanted to do the game to the best of their abilities. The group ended up having fairly good times, but we did help them out a little bit. Overall, all of the teachers at NPE loved having us, as we've gotten all positive feedback. As we continue to develop our second game (as you'll find out later) they all want us to come back again soon. Mrs. Cannon's Class: Mrs. Cannon's 4th grade class was the first class we have done so far at sugar creek, and it was a great day there. All of the kids loved the game and tried very hard to solve it. It was the advanced group, so we rarely helped them with problems. After the game, the teacher had us come in to talk about high school and all of the cool things you can do when you get there. They asked questions for us and we were able to talk about all of the sports, clubs, and classes we take. We were also able to talk about this service learning class we are in now and why it is so cool. Next: We are working on a new second game, called Disney Discovery. It is obviously Disney themed, as we are positive that with the knowledge of tips and tricks from our first round of games, our second round of games can be even better. We plan to start the second game in a week or two, as it takes time to develop the clues and plan the game out. All of the teachers we have done so far want us back to their classes, so we will be very busy over the next few weeks.
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Recently: Recently, we have finished all of the classes at NPE, with the exception of one class, which we are doing next week. We are starting on a next round of clues and problems because all of the teachers we have done want us to come in again. We have gotten great feedback from all of the teachers and the word has spread to other schools, as we are thinking of going to other elementary schools in New Palestine. The first round of this game has gone great, and we expect the second round to be even better. Mrs. Kliene's Class: Last week we were able to go to NPE and do our game to Mrs. Kliene's 4th grade class. Like our other classes, the game was very successful and the kids loved the game. They all participated and were very energetic about doing the game. However, this class figured out our game very quickly, as this class solved it in record time. We decided to try to make the game slightly harder next time, but for our first trip it was challenging enough. Mrs. Kliene told us to come back as soon as we can, so we are working on making a new round of clues. She gave us some advice on what to do and how to do it for next time, so we think it will be even more successful the next time we visit her class. Here is a picture of us with her class - What's Next for us: We have been working on contacting former classes we've been to to ask for advice for the next round of the game. We've gotten some great responses, such as theme ideas to what our problems should be based around. We are currently working on making next clues and thinking about how to make it more challenging for the kids, as well as keeping it fun for them. We hope to finish this next round of clues by the end of the week at the latest, and hope to go to another class by the following week. We still have one more class left to do this week with the first round of the game, so our primary focus should be that. After that, however, it will be on making our game better for the future.
Previously: We originally had three classes to do our BreakoutBox game on, but due to two hour delays and school closing, we were only able to do two games over the past few weeks. We did Mrs. Rush's class and Mrs. Oliver's class, and they both went very well. We are trying to reschedule the two classes we had to cancel on originally to make them sometime this coming week, but it is hard to find a time where they are free and we don't have an awkward schedule for school. Besides some of the struggle in scheduling, this project is going very well. We still have some classes to work on at NPE, and after that we might branch out to older kids, such as 5th and 6th graders. Mrs. Oliver's Class: This was our first class we did over the past two weeks. It was with 3rd graders, so we had to change some our problems for the younger kids. Even though we had some minor bumps during our game, overall it went very well. We had two teams race against each other to see which would finish first, and it made all of the kids try very hard to win. Mrs. Rush's Class: After the first two of our games were cancelled, we hoped this 3rd one would be able to work out for us. Luckily, we were able to go over to NPE and give the game to Mrs. Rush's classroom. It was a great day, as all of the kids were very active in the game and participated very well in all of the problems. As you can see in these pictures, all of the kids had a fun time. What's Next: We still need to change our lesson plans and make new themes for classes. Also, we still need to reach out to more teachers about doing our game. We have been very fortunate so far to have many teachers reach out to us to have us come in, but we need to make sure we area reaching out to everyone. Overall, our project is going very well and we are pleased to hear of all of the positive comments about our game.
Previously: We have been working very hard on our project, and we think that it shows in our work. We started off by making our theme "SpongeBob," since all of the kids know that show, it's easy to base our problems around that theme. We have a total of seven problems, some based around solving basic math problems and some based around word problems and problem solving. Each group member was in charge of making their own clue, and then we worked together to make the other three problems. Setup: Our setup is pretty basic, but extremely effective. We first divide the class into two teams, it has been boys vs girls in most cases, and then we take them separately into the spare room where our game is set up. We have the first group all work on one clue together, so that they can open a small box with invisible ink pens, because some of the problems have writing in invisible ink. Once they open the box, they slip up however they want to work on the six problems. We time the first group to see how long it takes them, and once they are done, we have a countdown for the second group. If they get it done sooner than the other group, they win candy (even though we give both groups candy). This setup has been used three times and has been proven to be effective because it lets us help the kids out and it makes the kids excited to do it because they want to win to get candy. Mrs. Purciful's Class: This was our first class, and overall it was probably our best class so far. We had Mrs. Purciful's 4th grade advanced class and we set everything up in a spare room. We divided the class, and had the first group come on. It took the first group around seventeen minutes to complete. The second group took around fourteen minutes to complete. It was a great day and the kids seemed to really love it. Mrs. Canada's and Mrs. Oliver's 3rd grade classes: After we did Mrs. Purciful's 4th grade classroom, I received a lot of emails about doing this for other teachers. We had received a lot of praise from Mrs. Purciful about our game, so that was a main reason why so many teachers emailed us. Mrs. Canada and Mrs. Oliver were the next teachers to contact me for us to do our game for their class. The teachers had told us about some of the curriculum they were going to be teaching at the time we where going to be there, so we based some of our problems around that. We did both classes in the same week, and even though it was very different than the fourth grade class, it still went very well. Both classes were very excited to do the game and all of the kids seemed to love it. All three teachers emailed me and told me how well we did.
What's Next: We are still emailing teachers and planning when we are going to go to their classrooms to do our BreakoutBox game. Many teachers have already contacted me about doing it, we just still need to plan it. Also, we have to update our curriculum for each grade and class so it will be at their age level. How it Started: While NPBid is temporarily shut down, our group decided to start a new project. Mr. Large gave us the idea to do it. We were hesitant at first, but we ran with the idea when we were on board. The BreakoutBox is a game where students have to solve clues and break locks in order to get into the large wooden box. The age groups range from 1st grade to full grown adults. It can be a lot of fun and can improve team building and critical thinking skills. This game was done a few years ago by other students in this class, but we hope we can do it just as well if not better than the group before us.
Starting Steps of Our Game: First off, we needed people to play our game. We talked to Katy Eastes, the principle of NPE, and she talked to all of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers at the school. We had a great response, as around 7 teachers asked for us to play our game with their class! We were happy to get such as great response, but we knew that we needed to make the game great, fun, and make it educational and beneficial for the kids. We started off going to Breakoutedu.com, which is the website the BreakoutBox uses, and we played some of their online games. We did that to see what they did and how they played it, so we could base our game around how they do theirs. We think our game will be educational but very fun fir the kids. Our BreakoutBox Game: For our game, we decided to base it around team building and basic math skills. We have around 6 locks, so we need around 6 clues, which is 1 for each lock. Some of the locks have numbers, some have letters, and one even has directions. We each decided to work on a clue, and we put all of our ideas on this document. For my clue, I am using basic math skills and using scrambled letters for them to solve. I feel like it will be fun for them to solve but they will also have to work to find the correct answer. Overall, all our clues make it fun for the kids to solve, but also makes it educational for them. We are very excited about this project and what we can do with it this year, |
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