iCivics Games and the Importance of Reflection

My students love to play iCivics games. The games do a great job of helping students understand important civics concepts, but they are so much more powerful as a learning tool if students have the opportunity to reflect and make connections to what they have learned in class. Thankfully the wonderful people over at iCivics have provided a Teacher's Guide for each of their games. All you need to do is set up a free teachers account, and you have access to the Teacher's Guides plus a ton of great lesson plans and resources.

Google Classroom makes it easy to assign an iCivics games and a reflection assignment to go along with it. Take a look at the Google Doc template below. I have provided students with a directions, a link to the game, pre-play questions, and post-play questions. There is no reinventing the wheel here, as the Teacher's Guides from iCivics already contain the pre and post-play questions. 

In Google Classroom, I set up the assignment so that each student gets their own copy of the template. That way they can type their responses to the questions right into the document before, during, and after playing the game. The pre-play questions serve a formative purpose. Once students start playing the game I can spot check responses to the pre-play questions and instruct accordingly. They essentially serve as a pre-assessment, especially if the game is being used to introduce a topic. As you can see in the student work below, reflection helps students make connections between the game and important civics concepts.

If you are reading this blog, I am going to assume you are familiar with iCivics. A lot of teachers assign the games, but do not take advantage of the other great resources from iCivics. Do yourself a favor and check them out. Especially the Teacher's Guides for the games. It will make the learning experience from game-based learning so much more powerful for your students.