Game Design in Classrooms

For about three years from 2018 to 2021 I worked as an ALT, or Assistant Language Teacher, teaching English to elementary to junior high students in a very small city in Japan. When I originally signed up for the position I admit that I was mostly looking forwards to learning more about my heritage, but I was also excited to try and incorporate the skills I forged in game design in the classroom. I had already planned out some neat interactive activities I could play with the students during class time, and was kicking around the idea of creating simple software they could take home to engage them outside of English classes.

I really wasn’t prepared at all.

I quickly found out that the students’ access to technology at school was rather limited, and what access they did have was to ancient slabs of loudly whirring machinery, some of which still proudly bore their Vista stickers despite the fact they were slated to be upgraded to Windows 10 soon. Also, they permanent tethers to outlets. Also also, few of my teachers wanted them in class at all because they were too distracting, and to complicate matters further we had to requisition them ahead of time with the administration of each of my six schools which required paperwork, and signatures, and…so I gave up on using them. No video games in the classroom. My computer science degree sat mouldering in a container in central Florida.

But if I’ve learned anything from game jams, or really any artistic endeavor in general, it’s that limitations breed creativity. I couldn’t use computers outside of PowerPoints. I couldn’t communicate with my students with language. I only visited each of my schools once a week, and for many of them, that was the only interaction in English they would have at all. How do I keep my students engaged, motivated, and encourage comprehension without excessive reliance on exhaustive description? Not to mention many of the teachers I taught along with were usually terribly overworked, and had little time to plan lessons with me…

I have a soft spot in my heart for games that force you to intuit their mechanics. I believe it sets a strong foundation in the mind of a player when they discover the uses of a mechanic themselves, which allows it to become second-nature as they explore further complications and iterations on the game formula. Kind of a no-duh, but I wanted to try and do something similar with language concepts. I began by playing simple games with my elementary school students. They were already familiar with a number of simple vocabulary games, but nothing terribly complicated; most of the games were reactive and required little input and creativity from the students. What I began doing was introducing mechanics; one that I used often was the ‘hot potato’. I’d have a song or a ticking sound playing, and the students would have to name vocabulary to pass the ‘potato’ to the next person. Whoever was holding the potato when the sound file ended would be the ‘loser’. Once the students got a hold of this, I’d bring in another mechanic, such as four corners – the students would have to move to certain corners of the room based on a word I’d shout. In the end the students would be whizzing the ball around the room as the ran back and forth, screaming English along the way. This may sound complicated, but after doing both activities in a vacuum, the students would pick it up pretty fast, with the added benefit of forcing both proactive and reactive usage of English. Then, I could graduate vocabulary to grammar phrases for older students, mix and match different games, and so on. I think a lot of my teachers ended up pretty confused through a lot of it, but the kids picked up new games disturbingly fast, so I decided to match their pace instead.

Of course, things didn’t always go swimmingly. Sometimes games were just to ridiculous or esoteric to be understood. Sometimes I simply could not communicate a game, despite it being simple in nature, because of the language barrier. I ended up having to remove a lot of the competitive nature from my games due to the devastating effects loss tends to have on younger kids (I’m talking class is canceled because someone tore their English textbook in half and started flipping over desks), which led to a general loss in tenacity. Later on I pivoted into a ‘PvE’ mindset and became the big bad boss against a unified front of elementary kids, which they immensely enjoyed, though this came with the downside of less individual English practice. I generally had to alter my methodology to match the English level, number of students, engagement, attitude problems, and so on, though I rather enjoyed the puzzle-like challenge of crafting different games to fit each class. I can only hope these were at least memorable, if nothing else.

Here’s my step by step for making elementary-level games:

1. Identify your limiting factors. Create a hierarchy of their importance that you can consult when designing your game. For example, if I’m designing a game about greetings, that subject obviously going to be the game’s most important limit. Other examples include competitiveness, class maturity, differences in student comprehension levels, special education needs, class time, and so on. For the purposes of later examples, let’s say I have a class that is young and impatient, easily excitable, is new to the subject matter, and is a bit whiny when they lose.
2. Create a simple mechanic to base your game on. This should obviously go hand in hand with your subject matter. As greetings require interaction between two or more people, we want the students to find themselves in pairs to practice. How do we get them there? For this example, my mechanic will be walking in lines. Students will be positioned around the edges of the classroom, and will walk in straight lines. If they bump into another student, they will each give the other a greeting. Then they each choose a direction to send off their partner in, and the process repeats.
3. Now adapt. Some students may feel unmotivated to play, or may purposely choose to avoid interactions without a point to the game. To encourage them, tell them they earn a point with each successful greeting (tell them to keep track on their fingers)! However, my example class is also full of sore losers. I’ll tell them to keep track of the points they get in order to keep them engaged with the game, but I won’t ever ask this class to share their results. Some students might try to anyways, but I’ve found most elementary kids will quickly lose interest in bragging or comparing on their own if you keep the class moving with more activities. This game also requires movement, so the excitability of the class can quickly spiral out of control; if students start running around like lunatics, introduce a clause that if anyone is running, a teacher can tap them on the shoulder and they must sit and lose a bit of time. This also adds a bit more engagement, strangely enough.
4. Level up. Once the students understand the basics, you can start getting more complex. As I want students to practice different greetings for different times of day, I’ll have a few pictures for morning, afternoon, evening, and night that I can switch out on the front board. I’ll tell the students to use the greeting that is currently on the board when they bump into each other, giving an example by doing so with a teacher or an outgoing student. You can keep adding new iterations and changing around rules as you please, though it’s important you pace these changes so the game remains familiar enough.
5. Run interference. As with all games, someone will invariably want to break your game somehow; do not let them get away with it! You’ve got the benefit here of being able to personally moderate your games. Say one of my students is purposely avoiding intersecting with others. Bad decision, you’ve invoked hard mode! Personally interact with the student and grill them on their English knowledge. Just remember that you won’t be able to engage with all students. If you’ve got kids with attitude problems, that are excessively shy, or are just in terrible moods, pushing them can be a bad play. Use your best judgement.
6. Pivot if things aren’t working out. There’s a good chance the game might fall flat. All it takes is one popular student to vocalize their dislike for a game, and the whole operation can fall to pieces. Similarly, don’t try forcing a game if the students just can’t grasp the concept. Pivot to a backup, or something more familiar. You’re not going to create a banger every time, and it’s best not to waste time fighting against the current.

In junior high, English curriculum is generally very analytical with few opportunities for application, so I was often used by teachers as a conversation tool. This was helpful for the students who were already engaged or interested in English, but did little for shy students and slackers. Because I often didn’t have a lot of control in the classroom, I couldn’t inject familiarity into my activities the same way I could the elementary students as I didn’t have guaranteed ‘Rhenn Time’ (this was how one of my teachers referred to my activities on the schedule). Instead, I had to opt for games that were intuitive to quickly pick up. I could graduate a bit more from simple games due to the slightly more elevated level of English the students had, but I also had to deal with the drastic change in academic tone that occurs between elementary and junior high; kids are given a lot more responsibility, and generally act more ‘serious’ as a result. No more running around the room. A lot of what I could do generally depended on the trust I had from my specific teacher, as well as the willingness of the class to participate, so I generally had to default to games based around textbook conversation; one of my teachers was rather fond of ‘checklist’ activities where students run around asking questions to fill out a chart of answers. Theoretically useful, but not engaging at all.

So what could I do? I tested a lot of things, with varying levels of success. Quiz-type games were usually a hit, especially when there was less emphasis on individual involvement. Kids start to get embarrassed a lot more in junior high. My attempts to create more complicated games were generally met with confusion and disengagement; I still cringe thinking about the magnetized cutouts I made to symbolize certain grammar structures as ‘bosses’ complete with health bars and ‘attack’ mechanics where the students would damage the boss with proper sentence forms and ugh, what was I thinking…most of my games in junior high started to scale back in ambition after that.