Transformations are inherently interACTIVE. The act of transforming one thing into another is a great way to hook students’ attention and to engage them in the lesson at hand. Generally, we transform our classrooms towards the end of a unit or lesson of study, allowing students a fun way to demonstrate their recent learning.
The particular transformation is one that has been on the back burner so to speak for years and it was initially inspired by a photo found on Pinterest. With some intentional planning, this simple photo led to a day full of learning that could easily be integrated into any grade level or subject area. Here’s how to get started:
(click on any subheading to jump to that section)
Game Explanation
This room transformation obviously centered around the game board placed in the center of the room. Students would be divided into teams and would sit around the outside of the game board. These teams were either PacMan or Ghosts and were identified with large laminated “game pieces”. Task cards were created for each round of the game, which had a set of leveled questions on it—1 dot, 2 dots and 3 dots. The more dots the question was worth the harder it would be to solve. Students could choose which questions they answered in what order which differentiated the activity for various levels of learners or classes.
Each round was structured as follows:
1 member from each team took a spot on the game board holding their laminated game piece. The other teammates stayed at the table to answer questions.
When the round started, teammates at the table answered questions from the task card. They worked together to solve and wrote out their answers on a small whiteboard. When they were ready to have the answer checked, they simply raised their hand.
The teacher’s job is to roam the room checking answers from the teams as needed. If the team answers a questions correctly, they signal to their teammate on the game board how many spaces they can move. (The spaces moved correlate to the level of question answered)
The teacher decides the length of each round (ours were about 10 minutes) and then can repeat rounds until every student gets a chance to be the live game board piece. (ex. If you have five members on a teams you would have 5 rounds total.)
Teams accumulated points by keeping track of the dots they moved during the round. Each small dot on the game board was worth 1 point and the larger dots were worth 5 points. A team leaderboard was created online and points were tracked throughout the day.
Classroom Set Up
The beauty of this room transformation is that you can do as little or as much as you wish in regards to the set up. I started planning weeks in advance and did a little each week to avoid having a lot to do all at once. I also reached out to parents and asked for several items to be donated which cut down on what I had to gather myself.
Game board
The game board was mapped out using the already existing tiles on the classroom floor. The outline of the board was created using a simple grid in Word where we highlighted the layout until we got it to where we wanted it. Our grid turned out to be a 15 x 15 square.
When creating the board on the floor we used blue painters tape for easy removal. We used 2 inch tape for the outside lines and the innermost ghost box and then thinner, 1 inch tape for the rest of the maze. For the white dots we used a hand circle cutter to mass cut out all the smaller dots, and a larger die cut was used for the bigger dots. We spread 6 bigger dots around the game board to mimic the real game but you could have as many as you want.
We illuminated the game board with black lights. As mentioned in previous posts, black lights are one of our favorite supplies for room transformations.
Black lights can be used in so many different ways for different themes, and in this particular case they added the perfect amount of pop to make our game board glow. They gave the room that dark, arcade-like feeling which was just perfect! The link to our favorite set of lights is here.
Team Tables
Teams sat around the game board at tables that were decorated to look like ghosts. Each table simply had a colored tablecloth draped on it with large eyes taped to the front. We just hand drew these and then laminated them so they could be reused.
Score Keeping
Students earned points by answering questions correctly from their task cards. These task cards were laminated so students could write on them and circle the questions they had already completed. This, along with leaving tally marks on the page, helped them keep track of their points. Click on the image below for the FREE task card template we used.
Click on the image to download the free editable template!
At the end of each round, we recorded the total points earned by each team in a live leader board template. This was done in a document online because our classes rotate classes and it allowed each teacher to keep adding points to the teams as they rotated rooms for math/science and ELA.
Click on the image to download the FREE editable template!
Room Decoration
The exterior of the room was draped in black tablecloths. You can use the ones that are singly packaged, or if you are willing to take the time and save a little money, we also had rolls of it donated which we cut to the desired length. We hung them by attaching them to the ceiling with small binder clips which you should be able to get from any Target, Walmart, Dollar Store, or on Amazon. Attached to the tablecloths were just ghosts and PacMan images we printed out and laminated before cutting. These were the same images we used for the game board players.
Hanging from the ceiling were ghosts that we made using balloons and left over colored tablecloths. The eyes were made using circles in PowerPoint and they were just cut out and taped on top. We hung them using the same binder clips.
Other decorations were created by scratch including our PacMan sign which we just traced using our projectors, our giant PacMan posters that we put on our doors, and this adorable arcade sign that my teammate made for us all. If you are not the crafty kind, you can purchase various banners from Amazon like the one below which are pretty cool too!
Music
We used music from the game as a timers to signal the starting and stopping of each round as well as music for when the students entered in the morning. There are many options available for the ones I used are listed below:
Morning Entrance (2 min.)
Longer Medley (start and stop after 10 minutes)
As with any room transformation, it is important to always start with the standards you are looking to teach or review and then look to how you can integrate the fun theme into the learning. With this transformation, we used the day as a spiral review of standards we have covered all quarter before going on break.
-- Let us know if you’re using any of these ideas in your classroom! Be sure to follow us on social media (@TheMerrillsEDU everywhere) and tag us! 👓👗
For more tips, tricks and lesson ideas for making learning more interACTIVE, check out our books The InterACTIVE Class and Flipgrid in the InterACTIVE Class on Amazon!
