One of the key tenets of Teach Like a PIRATE is to have a "How can I use that?" mindset...it's a way of looking at the world. I love how EDrenaline Rush author, John Meehan, has taken advantage of the current popularity of the show, Floor is Lava, in order to create a wildly engaging back to school activity for presenting your syllabus, rules, procedures,...basically all those starts of school housekeeping things on your agenda. This shows how this can be adapted for in the physical classroom OR in remote learning, distance learning setting.
By the way, I'm not surprised! John is amazingly creative and has a true knack for developing powerfully engaging strategies. His DBC Inc. book, EDrenaline Rush: Game-Changing Student Engagement Inspired by Theme Parks, Mud Runs, & Escape Rooms, is filled with unique ideas that are sure to spark your imagination. Give it a shot!! (Do not throw away your... nevermind...)
{Do NOT miss the PS message this week!!!}
Here you go!!! Class is Lava from John Meehan! Even if this is not your thing...hopefully it sparks an amazing idea and just pushes you a bit to really take back the best experience we can under extraordinarily trying circumstances.
Guest Post by John Meehan
Ready to add a little heat to your sleepy back-to-school syllabus? Then watch your step! Because THE CLASS IS LAVA!!!
So here’s how the onboarding game plays out:
FOR IN-PERSON TEACHING:
Your goal is to work with your teammates to successfully navigate your way through a series of challenges scattered throughout the classroom, collecting all ten items of furniture as you go! You can explore these locations in any order that you’d like.
FOR DISTANCE LEARNING:
Send an editable copy of the slideshow to each member of your classroom, and adapt the challenges from a team vs. team game to a self-paced adventure through individual checkpoints. Give your classes a fixed amount of time to complete all of the challenges in play, and allow students to navigate each “obstacle” and check it off of the list in any order that they’d like.
FOR EITHER APPROACH:
Picture this: it’s the first day back in your classroom! Do you go the traditional “two truths and a lie” route followed by awkwardly reading the syllabus aloud to a room full of sleepy teens? FORGET THAT — your students have been cooped up away from their classmates for MONTHS! And there’s no time for boring back to school lessons when THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!!
Wake up any tired back to school routine by turning your day one rules, procedures, and consequences housekeeping items into an all-out gamified team-vs.-team race that blends icebreakers, getting to know you activities, and MEANINGFUL face-to-face dialogue that’s guaranteed to stand out from the parade of other sign and return forms and the usual back-to-school procedural grind. If you’re like me, I want my students talking about my class at the dinner table from *the very first night* — and this is a game-changing way to start your year off strong
Rather than going the usual “two truths and a lie” approach followed by an equally awkwardly routine of reading the syllabus aloud to a room full of sleepy teenagers, I decided to turn my day one rules, procedures, and housekeeping items into an all-out gamified supply race that blends icebreakers, getting to know you activities, and MEANINGFUL face-to-face dialogue — intentionally designed to stand out from the parade of other sign and return forms and the usual back-to-school procedural grind. If you’re like me, I want my students talking about my class at the dinner table from *the very first night*. So I start each year with a simple promise: “They say that your favorite class is the one that you like the most. And your best class is the one where you learn the most. If we both do our jobs right, this class will be both.”
Game on.
In the Class is Lava welcome game, students are randomly divided into five competing teams (or divided into individual at-home squads with anywhere from 1-5 members in each group) in an effort to complete 10 different activities before the end of class bell rings, blending a mix of new school ed tech (Google Forms, Flipgrid, Remind, and Padlet) with old school pedagogies like collaborative learning and honest-to-goodness HUMAN INTERACTION — all of which are so critically important, especially in those first days of school. And along the way, they’ll likewise be…
- Signing up to receive regular text message alerts from your class
- Learning the ropes of your classroom with self-directed autonomy
- Completing course intro surveys to help you know who’s who
- Recording short video introductions to give you a sense of their tech savvy
- Chatting with you casually without interrupting other teams’ progress
- Posting selfies and bite-sized bios to help you put a face to a name
- Submitting goals and short writing samples to gauge the work that lies ahead
I’m sharing this resource template and actively encouraging you to steal it for your classes. Save a copy of the Google Slides template and make it your own! Use it as is, or switch up the theme with a new coat of paint to fit the needs of your learners.
Change The Game.
Check out a handful of variations of the core activity to get a feel for how easy it is for teachers to re-theme the default template to suit the unique needs of your classroom, swapping out individual tasks and selecting the overarching story that’s right for your learners:
- Vector Force: Everyday Heroes Doing Extraordinary Things – by Jim Justice (@justiceVVHS)
- Diagon Alley: A Magical Journey to Hogwarts – by Crystal Samuels (@crys_samuels)
- A Pirate’s Life: The Treasure of Swashbuckler’s Cove – by Justin Owens (@MrOwens_Math)
Get your students working, thinking, laughing, and ENGAGING from the very moment that class begins until long after the final bell has sounded for the day’s instruction — as if they were somehow playing your class like it was one giant video game. And just like that, you’ve got them excited to come back to see what you have in store for tomorrow.
That’s a game changer!
Click here to save an editable copy of the Class is Lava gamified syllabus template.
-John
Special thanks to John for agreeing to share this!!! Again, you can't go wrong with his incredible book, Edrenaline Rush. You can find it RIGHT HERE. Share your thoughts on book using the hashtag #EDrenaline on social media.
PS: OMG!!!! We just released a BRAND NEW book, and the timing of the message is perfect. #TeachersDeserveIt: What You Deserve. Why You Don't Have It. And How You Can Go Get It by Rae Hughart and Adam Welcome. This is a dream team dynamic duo! Rae is co-author of our DBC Inc. Book, Teach Better, and for Adam this is DBC Inc. book number FOUR!!!! He is the co-author of one of our all-time bestsellers, Kids Deserve It (with Todd Nesloney), Empower Our Girls (with Lynmara Colón), and author of Run Like a Pirate. Get this book into the hands of your colleagues! This is not a list of grievances...this is an inspirational message of teacher empowerment. Grab a copy HERE!
EDrenaline Rush offers a pulse-pounding collection of strategies to help transform your classroom into a hive of student exploration where students of any age will genuinely look forward to tackling whatever obstacle might lie ahead.
Create classrooms where students willingly step outside of their comfort zones and boldly dare to attempt the impossible.
