I recently blogged about a new game called Gimkit, where students win “money” for answering questions and can buy upgrades with their money to try to get ahead in the game. What’s cool is that the game does not require students to look up at the SMART Board at any time. They are working completely independently on their devices although they are all participating in the same game. Well, I recently had the idea to incorporate Gimkit into a catch up day. Do you ever have so many students who have to make up, turn in, and retake things that you decide to just give them a day for it? Well from time to time, I do just that, but it’s always a struggle to find meaningful work for the students who are all caught up to complete. So I had the idea to have a Gimkit game running. In order to keep the environment quiet and respectful for students working, the music was turned off, students had to silence their devices, and the leaderboard was not displayed for students to look at and comment on (and I could display information about make up work on the board). There was enough time during the period to play two games. For the most part, students were pretty respectful and remained quiet most of the time, and the other students had an opportunity to get caught up on work.
Do you ever do catch up days? How do you keep the caught up kids engaged for the period? Will you try Gimkit?
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