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Session 5. Assessing Learning from Play and Building Simple Games
Objective. Collect simple evidence of what pupils learned from play, and build, playtest and improve a simple game from a game your pupils already know.
A game can leave a class excited and a teacher with no idea what anyone learned. Evidence from play is not hard to collect, but it has to be planned, because the game itself gives you a winner, not understanding. This lesson gives you three light kinds of evidence, a way to build a game from one pupils already know, and a short routine for testing and improving it, so that your game gets better every time it is used.
Key ideas
Who won is not what was learned
- A winning team may have been lucky, fast or carried by one strong pupil. The score says little about each pupil's understanding.
- Look for three kinds of evidence: what pupils SAY and DO during play, what they WRITE during play (team answer slips), and what each pupil can do ALONE afterwards.
- Formative assessment, meaning evidence used to adjust teaching, is one of the best-supported ways to raise achievement (Black and Wiliam). Play is a good place to collect it. See course 8.1.
Simple evidence in a class of 40
- Observation note: watch only three groups per round and write short lines: group, what you heard, what it shows. Rotate the groups next round.
- Team answer slips: collect them and sort into three piles (right, partly right, confused). The size of the piles shows what to reteach.
- Exit ticket: 3 questions answered alone in 4 minutes, one at each level of the game. Compare with the learning goal, not with the score of the game.
Simple designs you can build
- Start from a game pupils already know: bingo, snakes and ladders, memory pairs, dominoes, four corners, a sorting game. Change the content and ONE rule.
- One published framework for classroom board games suggests this path: adopt a familiar game, enhance it, align it with the learning goal, implement it, then repurpose it for new topics.
- Let pupils help: writing question cards or a strategy guide for the game shows what they understand and saves you time.
Playtest, then change one thing
- Never run a new game with the whole class first. Playtest with one group or pair of colleagues and watch where people get confused or bored.
- After each play, ask three questions: did pupils think about the content, was it fair, was the time right? Change only ONE thing before the next play.
- Keep a game file: rules in five sentences, cards, a note of what you changed and what the evidence showed. A good game is improved for years and shared with colleagues.
Improve a game in small steps
Three kinds of evidence, three moments
During play, you listen. Pupils who explain a point to each other, correct a partner or argue from the cards show their thinking aloud, and a few lines in an observation note capture it. During play you also collect the team answer slips, which are small pieces of written work: sort them into right, partly right and confused, and you see what to reteach.
After play, each pupil answers alone. A three-question exit ticket, one question per level of the game, shows what each individual can do without the group. Compare it with the learning goal, not the game score. A week later, one repeat question shows what stayed. This is formative assessment in the sense of Black and Wiliam: evidence used to change what you do next.
Build small, test, change one thing
The fastest way to a good game is to adapt one pupils already know. Bingo, memory pairs, snakes and ladders and four corners need no rule teaching, so the time goes into the content. Change the content and one rule so that pupils must think: explain a covered square, defend a card, choose a level. Ask pupils to write some of the cards; writing a good question shows understanding.
Before using a game with the whole class, playtest it with a group of colleagues or a few pupils. Watch where they stop, argue or look bored. Change only one thing at a time, otherwise you cannot tell what helped. Keep the cards, rules and a note of each change, and remember that published games for the classroom often report enjoyment, so your own evidence of learning is what matters.
Examples from the classroom
Bingo with an explanation rule
Scene. Aziz in Fergana plays vocabulary bingo in Grade 6. Pupils covered squares without thinking. He added one rule: a pupil may cover a square only after explaining the word to the group. Aziz listens to three groups per round and writes what he hears. In the exit ticket, 31 of 38 pupils can use two target words correctly in a sentence.
Insight. One rule that forces explanation turns a recall game into a thinking game.
Team slips as work samples
Scene. Malika in Tashkent collects the team answer slips after each round of her Grade 7 geography game. She sorts 12 slips into three piles: 7 right, 3 partly right and 2 confused. The partly right ones all mix up two Uzbek regions. She uses the last five minutes to show those two regions on the wall map, and next lesson's starter has one question about them.
Insight. Answer slips are cheap work samples that show the one thing to reteach.
Playtesting with pupils as designers
Scene. Jasur in Bukhara asks Grade 5 pupils to write two question cards for the fractions game, one easy and one hard, and to explain the answer. He playtests the game on Thursday with the pupils who wrote the best cards. They find a card with two correct answers. Jasur fixes it and records the change. The game is then ready for the whole class.
Insight. Pupil-written cards show understanding, and a small playtest finds mistakes before the whole class meets them.
Common pitfalls
- Recording only who won and calling it assessment.
- Observing all ten groups at once, so no group is really heard.
- Changing three things after a playtest and not knowing which one helped.
- Skipping the exit ticket because the game ran over time.
Read the Evidence, Then Build and Playtest
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE game of Grade 6 'Navruz and the calendar' with observation notes, team answer slips and exit ticket results. Read them in pairs (5 minutes).
- Pairs (10 min): say what pupils learned and what they did not. Name the weakest goal and give one reason from the game design. Write the one change you would make.
- Pairs (15 min): choose a game template from the menu and a topic from your own textbook. Write the learning goal, rules in five sentences, 4 sample cards at two levels, and the three kinds of evidence you will collect.
- Playtest (15 min): swap with another pair. One pair plays two short rounds while the other observes with the observation note, then swap roles. Give each other one 'keep' and one 'change'.
- Alone (5 min): write the one change you will make and your classroom action task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- What did the observer see that the players did not notice?
- Which part of your own design is most likely to practise speed or luck instead of the goal?
- What evidence will you collect in your real lesson, and when will you decide to change the game?
Reflect
- What evidence of learning do you already collect during a normal lesson, and can you collect it in a game?
- Which colleague could playtest your game with you?
- Which game from this course will you still use next term?
Try it tomorrow
- Prepare a 3-question exit ticket with one question per level of your game.
- Write an observation note for three groups during one round and collect the team answer slips.
- Make one change to the game and record the exit ticket result next time.
Further reading and links
Judge a game by what each pupil can do afterwards, then change one thing and play again.