My instructions: Review, on the board, rounding numbers (to tens, hundreds, thousands)...

As the students were finishing up their silent, okay, silent-ish, reading, I approached each table and asked them if they had a favourite number.  Then I told each to put it up on the board, anywhere, in whatever colour.  A stir began to be created as the students noticed something happening... ooooh, I created a bit of a buzz, I did:)
Then I asked a series of questions to gather knowledge of what the students already knew and what some of them may need to review further:

• What's the smallest number?
• What's the biggest number?
• What's the longest number?

Next, I gave the instruction to group the numbers together...

• 1-digit, 2-digit, 3-digit, etc
• one with a decimal
• numbers ending in 0
• numbers already rounded
• numbers needing rounding

Then, I just randomly asked them to round certain numbers:

• What is _________ rounded to the nearest (ten/hundred/thousand)?
• How do you know?

We came up with the rules pictured in the top left of the picture:

• 5 or higer, round up
• 4 or lower, round down
• If rounding to the nearest ten, look at one's place
• If rounding to the nearest hundred, look at ten's place
• If rounding to the nearest thousand, look at hundred's place

I was able to ascertain that the students had a pretty firm understanding of the concept of rounding, which was further substantiated when I circulated around the room whilst the students were working on their task:

The Rounding Game (left by the classroom teacher):

• Roll 2 dice & round to the nearest 10; roll 3 dice & round to the nearest 100; roll 4 dice & round to the nearest 1000. 
• They were to do each 2 times, but I'm seeing how you could easily vary this, as some of the students told me they did (after having played in the last class).

Here's a brilliant website: ​http://studentvote.ca with lots of useful teacher resources!  We had a bit of a discussion about Canadian Political Parties... just let me say, that's interesting with a bunch of 4th graders!  Too bad we ran out of time before they had helped me who to decide who to vote for:(

WHAT IS STUDENT VOTE?
Student Vote is a parallel election for students under the voting age, coinciding with federal, provincial, territorial and municipal elections.

The purpose is to provide young Canadians with an opportunity to experience the voting process firsthand and build the habits of informed and engaged citizenship.

Since 2003, 26 Student Vote programs have been conducted across Canada. In the last federal election, 563,000 students cast ballots from 3,750 schools.
​

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Voter turnout in Canada has been declining for decades at all levels elections, particularly among young people.

Studies have also shown that habits of voting and non-voting persist over time, so if young people don’t vote now, there is good reason to believe that they won’t become voters later in life.

By practicing the habits of informed and engaged citizenship at an early age, students will be more inclined and prepared to participate in our democracy when they graduate high school.

​All the artists at the time were painting in the Impressionist style.  But not, Henri Matisse.  He used brilliant colours and made art like nobody else.  In fact, everybody made fun of Matisse and called him weird, and he said, "Thank you."  He did not want to be just like everyone else! What a brilliant way to draw a connection between a time in history to the students in today's classroom.

Seriously, (despite the purposeful blur) these kids were super into their artwork.  Each one of them did something different; and even the ones who were less sure of themselves, the ones who started copying one of the modelled ideas, ended up with something truly their own... creativity abound!

When the students bring me their finished, or in-progress piece, I ask:
What do you call your piece? - the answer tells so much (hitting communication and literacy curriculum expectations).  Students who love to tell stories have a chance to shine:)

Games are FUN, and when the mechanics are appropriate, a high level of ENGAGEMENT is born.  Thus, ACHIEVEMENT is sure to follow.  So, why wouldn’t we take some of these aspects and incorporate them into education?  I’m not talking about our students playing video games all day at school (though in small doses and used appropriately, they can be beneficial).

So many students “tune out” at school, or they just go through the motions; doing the bare minimum to get by until they are released into the real world.  The question remains, are we adequately preparing them for their roles when they get there?  Probably not, though I can say with certainty that a lot of great teachers are trying – my Twitter PLN is testiment to that!

What are the elements of video games that make players sit in front of a screen, focused for hours on end, and how can we transfer them into the classroom?

I am totally into the ‘Gamification’ of the stuff that we should do in our lives but aren’t always motivated to do.  Let me give an example… In January, I came across an amazing site called, Daily Challenge from YouMe Health (challenge.meyouhealth.com).  It is a health-focused social game.

Daily Challenge sends players simple tasks for them to complete on a daily basis, and the game encourages them to share their results with their Facebook cronies, who can provide encouragement and (ideally) participate in the game themselves. 
If players do something healthy—such as taking a walk, eating a vegetable-rich salad, or wearing lip balm that provides ample sun protection—they hit a “Done” button and gain points, earn health badges, and progress toward higher levels of the game. 
(It’d be easy to cheat in this game since there’s no mechanism to prove that a challenge has been done, but then players would really only be wasting their time and, potentially, misleading their friends.)  
I have so far completed 50 challenges, and feel a great sense of accomplishment.  Now, I just need a House Cleaning game!

I found myself thinking about the school experience as a game one night, instead of sleeping.  Here is my vision… I call it, “School as a Role-Play Game” and the role is student (a role our youth already play, but now, they are more engaged).  Projects and tests could be quests, and lessons and activities could be the mini-challenges along the way to allow students multiple chances to succeed, thereby keeping them engaged and motivated.  The harder goals will strengthen students’ perseverance.  Collaboration and cooperation would be key for some of the quests.  Along the way, the ‘player’ has the opportunity to train and strengthen different skill sets such as critical thinking, literacy strategies, specific curriculum subjects, problem solving, creativity, etc.  There would be mini-games, as well, which are a chance to earn achievement badges or points.  These would be the various sports teams, clubs, and intra-murals.  Teachers would be like the wise sage character whom students go to for guidance; they also give out the quests; and the rewards/feedback.  They could also interact with Experts out in the world from their physical school.  Ideally, students would form cross-level, multiple strength groups to aid them in reaching the goals, like in Farmville and other such social games, benefiting both the beginners and the experts.

Sounds quite similar to some of the things we already do, doesn’t it?  It’s just kind of tying the bits together, and thinking of it and presenting it to the students as a game.  A variation could be, “Super Teacher”…

Real-Life Example:
Quest to Learn is a New York City public school, a school that uses “game-like learning” as a way to empower and engage students from all walks of life. Quest to Learn (Q2L) is specific in its focus on connecting rigorous student learning to the demands of the 21st century, supporting young people in their learning across digital networks, peer communities, content, careers, and media.

From the Site’s Overview…
Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders. Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.

It’s important to note that Quest is not a school whose curriculum is made up of the play of commercial videogames, but rather a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences. Games and other forms of digital media serve another useful purpose at Quest: they serve to model the complexity and promise of “systems.” Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century.

The brainchild of Quest To Learn is a professional game designer named Katie Salen. Salen, like many people interested in education, has spent a lot of time thinking about whether there is a way to make learning feel simultaneously more relevant to students and more connected to the world beyond school.  And the answer, as she sees it, lies in games.

She believes that going to school can and should be more like playing a game, which is to say it could be made more participatory, more immersive and also, well, fun. Nearly every aspect of life at Quest to Learn is thus designed to be gamelike, even when it doesn’t involve using a computer. Students don’t receive grades but rather achieve levels of expertise, denoted on their report cards as “pre-novice,” “novice,” “apprentice,” “senior” and “master.” They are enlisted to do things like defeat villains and lend a hand to struggling aliens, mostly by working in groups to overcome multifaceted challenges, all created by a collection of behind-the-scenes game designers. The principles are similar to those used in problem-based learning, a more established educational method in which students collaborate to tackle broad, open-ended problems, with a teacher providing guidance though not necessarily a lot of instruction. But at Quest to Learn, the problems have been expertly aerated with fantasy.

Once it has been worked over by game designers, a lesson doesn’t look like a lesson anymore. It is now a quest. And while students at the school are put through the usual rigors of studying pre-algebra, basic physics, ancient civilizations and writing, they do it inside interdisciplinary classes with names like Codeworlds — a hybrid of math and English class — where the quests blend skills from different subject areas. Students have been called upon to balance the budget and brainstorm business ideas for an imaginary community called Creepytown, for example, and to design architectural blueprints for a village of bumbling little creatures called the Troggles. There are elements of the school’s curriculum that look familiar — nightly independent reading assignments, weekly reading-comprehension packets and plenty of work with pencils and paper — and others that don’t. Quest to Learn students record podcasts, film and edit videos, play video games, blog avidly and occasionally receive video messages from aliens.

They also spend significant time building their own games.

Here is a magazine article from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?_r=2&ref=education&pagewanted=all

How very fascinating!  I want to work at that school!  Ideally, we could just open up more of these schools, but, realistically, it is not going to happen.  So, what parts of this can we use in our schools?