Create a game
Think of a game and create the rules for it.
At school we work with text assignments. The group is given an assignment to write a text and a text is selected that will be central for a week as the text of the week.
This time the assignment was to come up with a game and write an instructional text for it.
For this I had taken an empty goose board game from the internet, but because this turned out to be such a fun assignment, we developed a game board ourselves with which a game could be devised.
The game
In groups of 3, the children were given the game board in A3 format and a list of conditions that the text had to meet. For example, they had to think about what age the game is suitable for, how many people can play it with, who can start, when you won and what is needed for the game.
Coming up with a game was not difficult for the children, but writing an explanation for it turned out to be quite complicated.
Real rules of the game
To help the groups get started, I also had them read the game explanations of existing games. I also had them think that someone already wants to play your game and they read the game explanation, do they understand it? So they got started quickly. The children spent a total of two lesson hours making the games and writing the explanations. In a third lesson they typed out their text.
Text of the week
The last time we spent doing this was playing each other’s games. This was a lot of fun. The rules had to be read and after a round of play it was checked whether the rules were clear and what could possibly be done differently.
After three rounds of the game, a text of the week was finally chosen. This was the text that best met the conditions compared to all texts, and which allowed the game to be played best.