When you teach 170 students in 6 classes each day, you’re bound to experience many moments where the lightbulb finally goes off for a student. For me, this is most special when seen in my most challenging class. This particular class has a very interesting cast of characters. They are often unmotivated and uninterested in science concepts. This is in large part due to the fact that most of them read well below grade level and do not comprehend scientific vocabulary easily. It also doesn’t help that this class meets after lunch when student attention span is very low. Knowing this information, my co-worker and I had to get creative.

During the our Ecosystems unit, one of the objectives that needs to be taught involves plant survival. Most of our students couldn’t care less about how plants survive and defense mechanisms that aid in that process. My co-worker, student teacher, and I had to come up with something engaging yet informative for our students to grasp this information. TEACHER LIGHTBULB!: SUPER PLANT HUNGER GAMES! As a team, we came up with a board game based on the Hunger Games series that had each student create a “super plant” based on various, required criteria that would ultimately be faced against a super plant designed by a student in the other class. Our students were pumped! However, we made sure that they were as invested and focused on the actual information as they were about playing against students in the other class. While implementing this lesson, I saw students within my most challenging class asking questions and being 100% engaged in the material! They conducted research, talked to each other, and used their notes to come up with the best designs possible and were able to explain why they made those options. It was awesome to see them throughout that planning process!

Not long after the Super Plant Hunger Games project, our students took their benchmark on information taught during the first semester of science. We included 5 questions about plant survival and defense mechanisms on their benchmark. STUDENT LIGHTBULB: 87% OVERALL AVERAGE within that objective which was a 42% increase from their pre-assessment! Our students not only learned the material, they had fun while doing it. It was fantastic to see that play out so well!