Classcraft, Gamifying My Classes

It's no secret that kids love games. A regular review for a test is yawnsauce with a side of snores, but a "space race" on Socrative? My students (mostly) get pretty excited about it. Competition is a pretty huge motivator! While competition may not be my cup of tea (ex: I have never been interested in any sort of sportsball, I wish I could direct the One Act Play without entering the contest, and I prefer cooperative board games to competitive ones), there's no doubt that we live in a competitive world.

Enter Classcraft. I stumbled upon it recently either on the #edchat hashtag on Twitter or on an educator blog somewhere. I don't quite remember. Regardless of how I found it, I thought I would try it out. Short review: I AM TOTALLY OBSESSED WITH IT. Long review? Keep reading this post!

I love Classcraft firstly because it encourages cooperation. It can be competitive (more on that later), but it has more cooperative elements than competitive ones. I love it, secondly, because it game-ifies the classroom experience, which in turn boosts student engagement.

Overheard in my seventh-grade classroom: "English class is actually kind of fun now." (Okay, so this student may not be engaging the content as much as I would like him to yet, but at least he's engaging with my class more, and that's certainly a step in the right direction!)

I have achieved Level 1 Educator status, and I am currently working on Level 2. I've learned a lot about this platform over the past month. As I review Classcraft, allow me to teach it, too!

Creating a Character

Students begin by creating a character. They have three roles to choose from: Guardian, Healer, or Mage. Each role has different powers (powers used in the game and those used in the classroom). Students are then grouped into teams. The game works best when these teams are balanced (at least one of each character role represented on each team) and small (no more than two of each character role on each team).

Students should be given the opportunity to choose their own team name (engagement comes from giving them that autonomy), but prepare to intervene if necessary. (My seventh-grade boys tried to choose wildly inappropriate names for their teams; in the end, I had to give them a name that they didn't like until they could come up with a name that I could tolerate.)

The purpose of these teams is to encourage everyone to work together. As the "game master", it is my job to award XP (experience points) to students for positive behaviors, or take away HP (health points) from students for negative ones. Classcraft is rooted in PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) and SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) research, which shows that increased engagement comes from more positive rewards and fewer consequences.

That's why I have twice as many positive behaviors built into the rules as I have negative ones. (I like to use "Quick Reward" rather than generic built-in rewards anyway, simply because I can give or take away points based on more specific reasons.) Rules? What rules? Oh, yes. Here's a complete "Rules Summary" for my classes: https://sites.google.com/view/wemhanson/classcraft

Falling in Battle, Powers

However, bad behaviors do happen, so HP needs to be taken. If students lose all of their HP, they "fall in battle" and have to complete a pledge (think "consequence") to continue. In my classroom, the pledges are not particularly difficult, but they can always choose detention instead. Actually, if students don't complete their randomly assigned pledge in 48 hours, they'll need to go to detention anyway.

Thankfully, teammates are able to "save" each other before that happens. Guardians are able to "protect" their teammates from losing HP, Healers are able to "heal" teammates who've lost HP, and Mages are able to supply their teammates with more AP (action points), which their teammates need to use their powers.

Some powers are game-specific (like protecting, healing, and giving power to teammates), while others can be edited by the teacher for class-specific rewards. For example, students can refer to their notes while taking a test. (Advice: don't offer any powers that you aren't willing to see students use repeatedly!)

Students don't have access to all their powers right away, though. As they level up during the game (by earning XP), they are awarded Power Points (PP) to spend on new powers. Powers are arranged in a trait-tree format; in other words, they have access to the first row initially, and each power in that row costs one point. As they unlock powers in the first row, powers in row two become available, and so on to row three. Powers in rows two and three are two and three points each, respectively. Once they buy the power, students still need to spend AP to use the power, of course!

Customizing, More Fun

I've talked about XP, HP, AP, and PP. There's one more P that I haven't discussed: GP, which are Gold Pieces. Students use gold pieces to buy more "equipment" to customize their characters, so their character looks just the way they want it to. Certain equipment is only accessible at certain levels, and some cost more in gold pieces, so students are motivated to keep leveling up and keep earning more!

Other fun features include Random Events (short mini-games to play during class if there's time), Kudos (sending positive messages to classmates to be displayed on the "class wall", which can also earn XP), Boss Battles (summative review), and Quests, which I'm excited to dive into soon.

For the most part, students are excited at the prospect of earning more XP and leveling up. Therefore, I have established more ways to earn XP during my classes. I have two "tournaments" running right now: a Freerice tournament with my seventh graders, and a MCA Review one with my tenth graders. Eight teams are competing for the highest XP! More details can be found on my Google Site.

Ultimately, I've barely scratched the surface of what Classcraft can do. I hope to write more in the future as I learn more about Classcraft. In the meantime, check it out! Classcraft.com