6 new Drafting Board games are now on GameUp!

Posted by SM Bruner on

That’s right–we’ve got six new games from the Drafting Board series, created by our incredible partner iCivics. Drafting Board games are designed to allow students in grades 5-12 to explore the process of producing clear and polished opinion essays. Students use arguments presented in a variety of resource documents to help them form an opinion on a controversial civics issue. They then use Drafting Board’s online essay-building platform to make their claim and support it with evidence and reasoning.

Drafting Board is designed as a teaching tool, which means the game works best when the teacher is available to actively facilitate the process and answer students’ questions. We recommend allotting 3 to 4 class periods in order for students to complete the game. When students are logged in to their individual MyBrainPOP accounts, they’ll be able to save their progress and return to it later.

There are 6 Drafting Board topics, each of which explores a different civics question:

Drafting Board: Community Service Should schools require mandatory community services for graduation?

Drafting Board: Interest Groups Does the influence of interest groups harm or help our political system?

Drafting Board: Student Expression Does the Constitution guarantee the right to wear whatever clothing you want at school?

Drafting Board: Electoral College Should the U.S. president be elected by the Electoral College or the national popular vote?

Drafting Board: Kids and Credit Should young adults under the age of 18 be given access to credit cards?

Drafting Board: Military Intervention Should the international community send military forces to stop a potential genocide?

Currently, Drafting Board is only available to MyBrainPOP subscribers, but all BrainPOP users will be able to access Drafting Board soon. If you don’t have a MyBrainPOP subscription, you can access the games through the iCivics site.

To learn more about how the games work, you can view the 4 minute Drafting Board overview video, download the product overview, or check out the 6 topic teacher’s guide. You can also view our Writing, Reasoning, & Civics Lesson Plan which includes teaching ideas that are applicable for all six games.