[agardnahhKey Master]

Share your creative ideas here. If we choose yours to share on the main blog space, you will win a BrainPOP shirt woohoo!

[bsallyMember]

have each student bring in an empty cereal or cracker box(or old file folder, pendaflex etc) and 3 old twist ties/piece of yearn or used ribbon, and separate the front and back panels, punch three holes in the side, add some paper from the school recycle bins, and tie by reusing twist ties. They then keep track of all their personal trash (or classroom’s) for a day (or week), by recording it in their journal. Then they sort their trash (from their list) into what could have been recycled, reused, or rotted(composted) and how they could have reduced it in the first place.

[agardnahhKey Master]

Hey @bsally, I love the idea of keeping track of personal trash. . . how do you see this connecting with the game “Food Fight” on Game up?

[stonewalllap_teacherMember]

I really didn’t understand the game at first and it took about three 5-minute games to get me hooked …I think I may have actually fallen into a trance… WHAT A GREAT WRITING PROMPT!!!
I would have kids play using specific characters/animals at first and have them write down what they observe happening to their animal after each move – as in a log book or diary. I would have them comment on/answer specific questions such as what happens when more plants (grasses vs. trees) are introduced? Did you apply fungi, fire, disease, or rain?-what happened to various populations when you did? How does increasing the population of your prey change the ecosystem/balance? How does increasing the population of other animals (not prey)affect your population? I would also have them write any special observations they had and a conclusion/summary regarding what the game helped them to learn/understand to include how the game helped them understand cause and effect in our environment and increase their awareness of how sensitive our ecosystems are. I would include a requirement for them to describe how they used the scientific method to play the game.

[taclarkMember]

I might start the lesson with something the students can relate to – the school community. Who are the people in a school building (i.e. principal, teacher, student). What would happen if everyone was a principal or only students in the building? What if there were a larger number of students than teachers or vice versa? I would use this to generate discussion about how things would be off balance. Then, transition into a discussion about food chains and animal communities. The students can develop food chains and food pyramids. You can have the students physically make the food pyramid; have them stand in parts marked off on the floor. Assign them as producers, consumer 1s, and consumer 2s. Play with the numbers and match students up with food sources in lower rungs. What does it do to the food supply (i.e. if you have 5 lions and 2 zebras, what will happen with the 3 lions/students that don’t get a zebra)? Use this to generate discussion and build student knowledge to make better decisions with Food Fight. Then introduce the game and tell students they are going to compete.
Tell students as they play they are going to map their picks and tell what happened (I would probably develop some sort of chart or table to make this easy for them to show their choice, points added/deleted, and population size). This way they can generate some discussion to explain what happened. After the students have played a few rounds and discussed what happened, I would probably have them choose one of their games to write a report/explanation showing their understanding of food chains, pyramids, supply, and population.

[jenniethomMember]

Excellent game! My second and fourth graders loved going at it against me and against each other. At first, it seemed pretty random, but then we reasoned out the science behind it, and it became a very strategic battle.

This would have been a fun addition to our Food Chain study unit in Science. At the time, we wrote and drew info about living things onto index cards and spread them out all over the floor. Then we arranged them in a food web and attached them with yarn. It was a great project to get perspective on just how complex the balance is in nature. Food Fight! would have reinforced these ideas with some out of the box thinking and fun.

Maybe it’s time to revisit Food Chains…

[allisynKey Master]

Thanks for sharing these great ideas! What can we do to better support teachers using Food Fight? Any suggestions for graphic organizers you’d like to see? What else?

[bsallyMember]

andrew: after playing the food fight game, the students will make their trash journal to see what percent of their trash they have recycled, what they threw away (because at school or soccer etc and too “lazy” to take home to recycle), what could be composted. You can have them just record all trash and then hold discussions of what could have been recycled or composted, or do the teaching first. You can even have them ave all trash, weigh it, and then reweigh after removing the recyclables. It is their own “real” version of the recylcing game, food fight. They can keep a record one day a week for several weeks and see if the amount of “trash” reduces. That is how I see it relating to the game.

[agardnahhKey Master]

@bsally, thanks for the clarification. I appreciate that you followed up, and I like how you’re taking the structures of the virtual game and applying them to a physical game. Cool idea.

[Elegant1Member]

I love food fight. I may not be a teacher but i can tell that students will love it, i certinly do : D

[Author]

Posts