How has your Classcraft experience been this year?

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I'm happy to say that I just ended my first school year where I've had the pleasure of using Classcraft. I am tremendously pleased with how well Classcraft went over with my students throughout the year! I am making some tweaks to my custom powers and daily events, as well as adding in some additional flair to the program for my next year. For this year, I essentially piloted the program in only one of my prep classes (my AP Seminar students) so that I would not get overwhelmed, since it only consists of 2 out of my 7 classes of the day. I took a survey at the end of the year to see how the students felt about it, I was pleasantly surprised by the results that I saw. Here's a link to that survey if you wish to see some of their customized input: http://tinyurl.com/ycjrsbvv 

For next year, I have some exciting ideas I'm working on. My first point of interest is to make the process of introducing and explaining the system to them much more intuitive and simple. I've been an avid user of Adobe's Spark ever since I learned about it a few months ago, so I made this crude presentation page and video to help my incoming students next season: https://spark.adobe.com/page/82BcenaNvpySU/ 

I took one of my ideas that I instituted earlier this year and brought it to a more corporeal form this time around. I'm so excited about this that I just couldn't wait to get over my cold make a video about my new system that I detailed out here: https://youtu.be/TTG4U_M1xow 

I'm really interested to see what everyone else has experienced this year. I'm looking forward to not just using this with my new students, but getting more teachers on board to create a genuine dynamic change in our school culture!

 

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Last year was my first year using ClassCraft as well.  I am not much of a gamer myself, so it took me a little getting used to, but I am really glad I took the time to learn the program.  My teaching partner and I have the same exact kids (just different periods).  He had to write many detentions throughout the year, whereas I rarely wrote a detention.  The kids, 6th graders, dealt really well with dying in battle.  I did, however, have a difficult time getting some of them to complete their death sentences.  I fixed that for the upcoming year by changing all sentences to items that take very little time, but are a bit of an inconvenience for the students.  I have items like picking up the trash from around the room at the start of their lunch period or organizing the computer cords or writing an 8 line poem about vegetables and presenting it to the class.  Most of the death sentences now have a benefit in it for me (cleaning, organizing, etc.)

By the end of this year, I felt sorry for the healers, because mages used their power to teleport quite often and warriors used their power to hunt often as well, but the healers didn't have a power that they were as excited about.  Therefore, I spent a little time this summer changing the powers a bit.  Healers now have the power to get an immunity token (I made some physical tokens), so they the next time they are going to lose health points or a member of their team is going to lose health points, they can use the immunity token instead.  I also created a homework patch which enables them to skip a few problems on their math assignment.  I think these will help those in the role of healer to be more excited about the game as well.

One of the other things I decided to change was the boss battles.  We will still do boss battles as designed, but I have individual whiteboards and I have created some lifelines for students to purchase with their GP during the game.  So whenever there is a question (I teach math and language arts) everyone has to work out the answer at the same time.  The student who is up against the boss for that question can purchase a lifeline if needed.  For example, they could poll the class and take the most common occurring answer or they could select 3 students to share their answers and how they solved the problem and then choose one of their answers.  I figured this way everyone will have to do a little more work during the boss battle.  I use boss battles as test/quiz reviews, so it helps if everyone has to participate in every question.

I also added some different higher level powers for my warriors.  I created ambushes and duels.  For an ambush, the warrior can select a warrior from another team to force into a 5 question boss battle.  I created several battles with silly topics like animal facts, multiplication facts, geography questions, states and capitals, etc.  For the ambush, if the chosen warrior wins the battle, they they earn the XP and GP from the battle, but if they lose, the warrior who ambushed him/her gets to receive the XP and GP that goes with the ambush.

In a duel, the warrior selects any member from another team to battle.  The battle consists of 5 random homework questions that we compare.  The student who gets the most questions right out of the 5 that I choose earns 250 XP.  If there is a tie, then we roll one die and whomever has the highest number earns 125XP.

I added some additional powers to the healer as well.  For example, Blind Faith...the healer has to use this power prior to taking a test or quiz.  If he/she is extra confident in doing well on the test, it is a good power to have.  If he/she earns an A on the test, then he can earn 500 XP for a math test, 350 XP for a grammar test, 250 XP for a vocabulary test, or 100 XP for a spelling test.  One of their hardest powers to achieve is Holy Power, which enables them to switch the seats of two other players for an entire week.

I also gave the Mage a power that will eliminate students asking me to change their powers so often.  The mage has a Time Warp power, meaning that they can allow themselves or a teammate to forget a power and learn a new one.  The mage can also Trigger a new event or Perform a Miracle.  I have a list of several miracles on cards and the Mage can come blindly select one of the cards to do something good for his/her entire team.

I hope these changes will make ClassCraft even more fun that it already is for the students.  I love how the game really helps to alleviate behavior issues.  It also helps students to master the classroom procedures quite well.  I love ClassCraft!

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