Day 141: Gamification in My World: Part One-In Music Class

Daily Blog Challenge Day 141/365

Towards the end of last year I started transitioning my 3rd and 4th grade classes to a gamified model.  I had a very basic idea of what gamification meant and I tried to make it work.  I had success, but I discovered after talking to a few teachers on Twitter, that there were better ways of organizing my classroom using this philosophy.  Sarah (@sarahdateechur) showed me her model for her Computer Classes.  Having a model to look at really helped give me ideas on how to implement this philosophy in my classroom.

Along with using it in 3rd and 4th grade Music, I am using this model in 5th grade Media.  All of the activities are ones I want my students to do anyways, but this model allows me to give my students choice on when/how they accomplish certain tasks.

I created 4 levels:  Novice, Apprentice, Practitioner and Expert.  These levels align with our Self-Assessment Rubric and have become the foundation of the assessments in class.  Students need to achieve so many Gamer Points (GP's) in order to level up.  In music, I chose not to specify which activities needed to be done for each level.  There is a list of activities for students to complete and each activity leads to Gamer Points, which in turn add up and enable the player to level up.

There are a variety of activities for students to complete.  Some projects are whole class, some are small group and some of individual.  My hope is that this will encourage students to participate in class activities.  So far, I have seen pretty good results.  It is still early on and I am learning and adjusting as we go.  My school is not 1:1 at this level, so I have a print out of the activity options.

3rd Grade Gamification Structure

4th Grade Gamification Structure

Do you use gamification in your classroom?  I would love to hear how you set it up.

Thank you for reading.