Jeopardy

Jeopardy in the classroom sounds a fun and engaging way to make sure the students understand and know the content that you have been teaching. It sounds like it would be a fun way to review information with students. I remember playing jeopardy in class growing up, and I remember how much fun it was. I remember learning information that I didn't learn the first time around and I remember it being engaging and fun. BUT what I don't remember is that when this game would be introduced the fighting would begin. Students would jump up and demand to be captain of the teams and the teams were never "fair". I played this is college recently and still the fights continued. The arguments of the teams not being "fair" was thrown out by different teams (the ones losing at that time). I should have remembered all of this when we decided to play this game with the fifth grade class.
   What an adventure! I am glad that we did this experiment because I now know how to handle my own class when it is time to review. I am not sure that Jeopardy is right for every classroom, and for this classroom it was not the appropriate game. This should have been clear when the class was having trouble working with certain students, but this was over looked. There would be some things that I would do differently in my next adventure of playing jeopardy in the classroom.
           FIRST I will make strict rules of the game. I will not assume that the class already knows how to play, because that was the problem we ran into. I will reiterate the rules every time this game is played so there are no questions about "fairness" of play. These rules will include ONE "leader" from each group that will speak or write their answer. This will include HOW the groups are divided up, and this will depend on the class size and how the class interacts with each other. Students will be reminded that BULLYING is not allowed, and that talking  down to any other player will be an automatic point deduction and kicked out of the game. Although, I suspect just mentioning that will discourage and end any thoughts of talking down to other players. 
              Jeopardy is a great way to review topics with students as long as the students realize that there are rules and they should and need to be followed so everyone can participate and learn. Some students learn with competition and others do not learn that way so making sure that the game is for your classroom is important before introducing the game. Students should be motivated to play the game and so offering bonus points on tests or homework is a good way to make sure that everyone participates.
   I would like to try to play Jeopardy again in the classroom but I would make sure that ground rules are laid out first and agreed upon. The students need to agree to play by these rules or they will not play by the rules and all chaos will break out.
          Playing Jeopardy with the fifth graders was an eye opener to the different types of personalities and learning styles that will be present in the classroom, and this should be taken into consideration when these types of games are designed. Although, I didn't think it was a complete waste of a day because some of the students left the game with information that they didn't know before, and that's the goal of the game. The game should be designed to go over information already gone over in the lesson, and the questions should be designed to get the students to think. I think that the questions were mixed between difficult and easy questions which there should be a range of questions of the range of learners. I do wish that the game would have allowed pictures to be added for the visual learners. I believe that I will use this game again in the classroom.