Loop Game Tips for Teachers

Tips to Make Games User-Friendly

1. Use complete sentences when creating the questions and the answers.
2. Have students submit questions for the ongoing development of decks.
3. Adjust the size of the cards to make them easier for younger children to handle and read.
4. When playing the game, players should read each card loud enough for everyone to hear and wait until the group confirms or rejects each answer.
5. When playing the game, students should lay out the cards like dominoes in a way that each question and each answer can be seen. By doing so, it is easier to go back and find errors.
6. When playing, place a marker on any card that the group is uncertain of so that it can be found easily if the deck does not loop.
7. When playing a game, everyone in the group should focus on the same question at the same time. Collaborating makes the experience a more cohesive learning experience.
8. When playing, students should refrain from stating an answer unless it is his or her turn. Otherwise, learning opportunities are shut off.
9. Print the same game on different colored paper, so that cards that get dropped on the floor get placed back in the correct decks.
10. Purchase small (4 X 5) baggies from a craft store for game storage.

Tips to Improve Test Scores

1. After playing a deck in school, send home one deck per student so that they can play it again (especially if reviewing for a test). Make sure to send home the sheet called How to Play a Loop Game. This document is in your LoopWriter folder.
2. Use some of the questions from your decks on your tests so that students see the relevance of playing the games.
3. When they finish a loop, provide students with the answer key (Shuffle Deck Screen), so that they can check their loop to make sure every card is answered accurately.
4. Make games that are complex enough to cause students to play a “cleansing round”. This means that their first attempt did not loop, and they need to go back and check all of their answers until they find the oversight(s).
5. Ask questions forward and backward so that a number of questions are answered twice within one deck. This provides more practice with key concepts.
6. Group your students so that they each get 5-10 cards so it’s a valuable learning experience.
7. Create cumulative decks so that students play a deck called Civil War I, Civil War II, Civil War III. The Civil War I deck consists of 15 cards, the Civil War II deck has 20 cards (including cards from the Civil War I deck), and so on. This provides students with repetition on a number of the questions/answers in addition to working through new questions/answers in each deck.

Tips on How to Differentiate for Various Abilities

1. Adjust the number of players in each group in order to make the game easier or more challenging for students of different abilities.
2. Create a loop game center with individual record sheets for students to record extra credit.
3. When a group finishes playing a deck, break the group in half and have them replay the game in smaller groups to make it harder, have them play against the clock, or have them go onto a higher level game of the same topic.
4. Use various complexities of decks during a lesson to differentiate for different abilities.