Adventure Challenges – Old School Games

This unit recreates old games like Hungry Hungry Hippos, Frogger and Pac-Man in real life, on land and in water.

 

Central Idea: Recreating games can inspire us to have fun and challenge us at the same time.

Key Concepts:  Function, Responsibility                       Related Concepts: Re-enacting, modifying, adapting

Lines of Inquiry: 1. Contribution/strategies to group challenge. 2.Decision making process in connection to challenge. 3. Committing to team/group in order to achieve task.

 

To start tuning in to this unit, we watched a youtube clip– Capture the Flag and discussed the game and how it was a recreation of old war/battle scenes. The question was raised, could it be played with water – How can it be done?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz7jgj2LlFo

Following this discussion, the main question was posed: What are the skills/tools needed to be successful in team challenges? We wrote answers on a new unit poster. Blue=students first ideas, red=PYP Attitudes, green=Learner Profiles. Over the next few weeks, we will add more words to the poster in black as we undertake different challenges.

We then played capture the flag with some team/rule changes after each win and finished with discussion related to lines of inquiry and unit poster.

 

Human Hungry Hungry Hippos

In this first challenge, students will be divided in to equal teams and have the following equipment waiting for them at their station: 2 X scooter boards, rope, a basket (cone in this case). Teams will begin from 4 different sections using half of a basketball court and send one student at a time to roll in to the center of the court on the scooter board. They will use their cones to try and collect as many hockey balls as possible to bring back to their group but they cannot use their hands. Once they are ready to return to their group, the team members will pull them back to their base using a rope which is connected to the back of the scooter board. Then, students will change and take turns going on the scooter boards to the court to again collect more balls. Review & change rules as needed (eg, students must take equal turns on board or any plan they want etc).

 

Human Frogger

I began this session by showing a youtube clip to explain today’s challenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9fO-YuWPSk

Have the area set up with 2 large ropes running down the side of the gym and small mats at the end as home base.

 

One team (5-6) will need to get in to their base leaping like a frog and avoiding the balls being rolled at them by the other teams on the sides behind the ropes. In the challenge, frogs must jump one at a time like in the computer game but they can use team mates (who can walk/stand) as blockers to help them get across, if a frog or blocker is hit, they must return to the start (blockers race back to become a blocker again). The number of balls used to roll at the frog matches the number of frogs/blockers in the game eg. 1 frog and 4 blockers = 5 balls. Once a frog is in their home they must stay there meaning the number of blockers decreases as frogs make it home but the number of balls decreases also. The final frog will have to make it by her/himself avoiding one ball but having no blockers and therefore the teams must discuss their strategy before beginning. If time allows, teams continue until all frogs are home. If not, divide time equally and see how many frogs can make it home in the allocated time.

 

The next video shows a full team finishing the challenge, but I sped it up to save some time (and it’s cool).

 

Human Frogger – Water

In another session, we made use of the small ‘learn to swim’ pool in order to play Human Frogger over water. In this version, the majority of students need to be in the water acting as the computer game to move the platforms that the frogs jump across. Use one student either side of a floating mat to hold and secure the mat whilst walking up and down the pool. The remaining students will line up as frogs on the side of the pool to begin leaping across.

 

The frogs need to line up on the side of the pool waiting for their turn and there can only be one frog on a platform at a time. Once that frog has made it across, they can then change with another student in the pool moving the platforms. The harder challenge actually ends up being the challenge of keeping the game moving and keeping platforms straight and in line. Instructions were given to students to “Act like the computer game” meaning they couldn’t deliberately speed up or turn when a frog was about to jump to their platform, they simply had to move up and down like a mechanical platform in a game, which was challenging for some.

 

Here’s another one at double speed and from a different angle.

 

Future Weeks

In the final weeks before the summative assessment challenge, we will attempt these same challenges again to try and improve on previous efforts. Also, the students absolutely loved these challenges which did take some time to develop so I believe it is worthwhile revisiting a challenge in another lesson. Following a period of reflection with the class, we decided that we will try and improve the challenges in the following ways:

• Human Hungry Hippos – Different groups, new elasticized rope (bungy rope), new basket for ball collection
• Human Frogger – Students rolling balls must sit/kneel to throw, blockers to block and not kick ball hard
• Pool Frogger – Using double mats for stability, maybe using soft lane ropes to keep platforms straight

Below are some photos and a video of challenges revisited. First up, students practicing with the new bungy cord.

Double mats for a bit more stability in Pool Frogger… with a few more risks taken!

 

Summative Assessment – Pac-Man

For the summative assessment challenge, I wanted to create another game in real life and assess the students on their planning, communication and general teamwork. My brainstorming led me to create the human version of Pac-Man which was quite a hit with the students. I began by creating the game area and wanted it to look similar to the old arcade screen, here is what I came up with after 30-40 minutes.

Lanes for Pacman set out by small cones & mats. Tall cones with balls (pellets) to knock off.

Pacman runs through the lanes knocking balls, ghosts ride on scooter-boards to trap/catch.

 

Each student took a turn at being the Pacman and therefore this challenge took two sessions. There were two challenges in this task, one was an individual challenge, being the Pacman who would run through the lanes knocking off all the balls (gobbling up pellets) and dodging the ghosts while using three lives to complete the task. However, the challenge I focused on more was the team of ghosts who I instructed could plan before the game began and had to work as a team to try and catch Pacman. I thought it would be too easy for a number of ghosts to just run and wanted to slow them down and decided to use scooter-boards. In the first two runs we started with four ghosts but Pacman won those rounds fairly comfortably so I  changed it and added two more. Six ghosts seemed to be a good balance and they were able to coordinate themselves to trap Pacman in a corner or lane. Here are a couple of videos to show how the game went.

 

Here’s another one in double speed, just for fun.

 

Most of the students could complete the majority of the course in their three lives but it was quite hard for them to get the last few balls as the ghosts had worked well enough to guard those areas. The challenge had achieved what I wanted it to, a demonstration of the students ability to plan and work as a team in a re-created game that was challenging and fun. Whilst I had focused on the challenge for the ghosts, I had thought about trying to incorporate the power pellet from the game somehow so Pacman could run through and not be tagged to finish off the course. I came up with using two larger balls that Pacman could pick up and carry for 10 seconds. The non-participating students helped me count and when time was up, Pacman would then drop the power pellet and continue. We didn’t have enough time for everyone to do it again as we had already used two sessions but the students have convinced me to revisit this challenge again before the end of the semester because they really did enjoy themselves.

 

Written Assessment

The written component for all of our summative assesment tasks creates the Sportfolio document for each student. In this task, they again had to reflect on learning experiences within the unit, consider important learner profiles and attitudes that most connected to the unit and demonstrate their understanding of the central idea through explaining how they were challenged and worked as a team when recreating and old game in real life.