Hey Teacher-Guides, welcome to part 2 of Quest Builders! – How to Create Your First Mastery Gamified Unit in Your Classroom. If you haven’t read last week’s blog, be sure to read that one first and come back and read this one next as the two parts are sequential. Last blog we dove right into creating your story outline for your gaming narrative in your classroom, the characters, how students demonstrate their mastery, and the minimum mastery level for your classroom, addressing why use gamification is such a powerful approach. This week, we’ll finish up the foundational aspects of how to get your first, basic mastery gamified level up and going in your classroom.

One thing that’s important in this whole system, highlighting why use gamification effectively, is to get the student buy-in. We want them to be able to make lots of decisions along the way. The more decisions they can make, the more ownership they are empowered to take in their education. One thing I like to do right in the beginning is to give students the chance to choose/create/customize their avatar or their character. This is a pretty standard practice in a lot of video games and it gives students a chance to put their personal preference in the narrative.

In my Spanish class, since my student heroes are Lucha Libre Monster Hunters, I give them a blank outline of a face and have them create their own Lucha Libre mask. We take a look at various Lucha Libre masks and we can talk about how each Luchador is identified by his own, unique mask. Most students really enjoy this creative freedom and I have students who really put a lot into their Lucha Libre masks. Then students put their Lucha Libre masks in the front, clear pocket of their binder so anyone can see it just by glancing at their binder.

Once you’ve decided how students will customize their character, it’s time to design your badges. In Mastery Gamification, badges are very important as it recognizes the work that the student has completed. In video games, players will get badges for the levels they complete. It’s a short-term reward that encourages the player to continue on. This is another reason to why use gamification in the classroom. Teachers have been doing various forms of this for years. In elementary school, we felt really cool if we got a sticker on our paper when we got it back. When my son does review school work during the summer, he likes to use stickers to track each successfully completed lesson. The interesting thing is that the actual sticker costs next to nothing but it means so much because it is an acknowledgement of the student’s work that they have completed.

See, just like us adults, sometimes kids have a hard time seeing why they need to do a task well. This is another reason why use gamification in the classroom. A kindergartener isn’t thinking about graduating with honors yet but the habits he develops towards excellence now will certainly help with that goal he will make one day. A third grader doesn’t think about all the math he will need to master to be an architect but it is still important that he is making a habit of excellence in math now for when he does decide to become an architect. That’s where stickers/badges come in.

The badge is a recognition of the work that the student has put in on a particular level. When the student can see the results of his hard work now, he will continue to work hard. This acknowledgment helps the student to learn why he must work hard and do his best. Eventually, the student will decide to do well to achieve longer-term goals when he develops to the point that he can think ahead far enough. In the meantime, we want to help our students that their work and effort matter right now.

That’s where badges come in, illustrating why use gamification in education. Once a student completes a level at the minimum mastery level, they receive a badge to acknowledge passing the level. Keep in mind that I do not recommend that the allowed minimum mastery level be below 70%. Students need to be reaching for a higher level of understanding than just “passing” at a D-. Yet the minimum mastery level needs to be something that every student can eventually achieve with enough time, effort, and support.

There are lots of ways to create your badges for your class. I use Canva and Google Draw to create the badges. Then I can just print them off for students as they pass levels. Generally, my badges will be an image of the boss that they defeated with the word “Defeated” stamped over the image of the boss. But you can create anything you want. Just be sure that the badges for each level are somehow unique because, as students move up in the levels, they will need to easily be able to tell which badge is for which level.

Then each student will need a trophy case. A trophy case is just some way for students to display the badges that they have earned. When I made my trophy case, I just created a cool background the size of standard printer paper in Canva and then put squares with question marks on the background of the paper.

As the students earn each badge, they tape the badge in the correct box for the level that they have completed. This trophy case is kept in the front clear cover pocket of their binder so that everyone can see how many levels they have completed. These badges and trophy cases become very important to the students and foster a level of healthy competition among the students. In fact, there have been a couple of times that I have been slightly late in giving a student their badge and they are quick to remind me that they earned it.

Once you have your badges and trophy case prepared, it’s time to decide your policies around boss battles (testing). In a perfect world, I could allow students to take all the time they need to complete a single level – even if it took the entire school year if they really needed it. However, in school systems, we have to send report cards on certain dates so we do have some deadlines we have to enforce. However, it is still important to me that students choose to do the boss battle when they are ready just like they would as a hero in a video game. This is one reason why use gamification in the classroom.

So I settled on a two-week window policy. I will generally allow two weeks where students can boss battle at any time in those two weeks with no issues whatsoever. If they had a late basketball practice on Tuesday, they do not have to boss battle on Wednesday, they can take an extra night to study and try the test on Thursday. While we are in that two-week window, I only count grades that achieved the minimum mastery level. If a student attempts the boss battle in that two-week window and does not achieve the minimum mastery level, I make note of the grade but I mark it as “no count” in the grade book.

At the end of the two-week testing window, I take off the “no count” and allow all grades to count. If a student attempted the boss battle and earned a 55%, that grade will not count towards their class grade until the end of the two-week window. If a student does not attempt the boss battle in that two-week window, I will enter their grade as “0” and “missing” at the end of the two-week window.

However, just because a student has a grade in the grade book that is less than the minimum mastery level or even a “0,” does not mean that they are stuck with that. In a mastery classroom, students have to achieve the minimum mastery level in order to move on to the new material so they will often need multiple attempts to achieve that level. If I did not allow unlimited retakes, students could get stuck at one level without the opportunity to move on and learn new concepts.

However, I feel that it is important to have some rules around the unlimited retakes policy. As far as the grade book goes, students will get unlimited redos on boss battles until they receive the grade they want at or above the minimum mastery level. Then I put in the best grade that they earn as the grade that goes in the grade book.

But in order to ensure that students are using their unlimited retakes wisely and are actually learning, I have some rules inspired by video games around these unlimited retakes. Students naturally understanding video game rules is one more answer to the question why use gamification in the classroom. The first rule is that each student automatically receives three lives (or three free retakes) in order to defeat the boss. This is pretty standard in video games and students understand the system. If a student attempts the boss battle three times and is still unable to meet the minimum mastery level, it is apparent that the student is not understanding something.

Therefore, I require students to “respawn” in order to earn more lives. This is also pretty standard in video games. In video games, respawning usually refers to having to start the level over to try again with another three lives. In my classroom, I require students to do study activities to earn their respawn. I will often look at the student’s tests and see what types of questions the student is getting wrong and if there’s a theme, I’ll assign a study activity on that particular type of question.  Usually, I assign students a study activity like making flashcards or practicing verb conjugations on a piece of paper that they have to show me before I allow them to respawn and receive three more lives.

Often, students who have to respawn will pass the level on their fourth life because we can find what was holding them back from understanding.  I love this system because it is a built-in intervention point for the student and the teacher. It forces me to realize who is struggling and take some one-on-one class time to help the student figure out what their hang-up is. Students cannot get lost in the crowd because the ones that need to respawn have to come to me for their respawning activity and I can take a moment to help them individually.

We’re getting close to completing your first mastery gamified unit for your classroom and answering the question why use gamification! The building blocks are starting to fall into place! What we need to do now is to decide how you want to deliver your gaming narrative, images, and lessons to the students. There are some really great online platforms out there for teachers to easily use. If you’re looking for one, I’d recommend Classcraft. But it does cost some money. If you’re looking for a free delivery system, I use normal Google Slides or Powerpoint. Then I can post anything the students need to my Google Classroom page or our Moodle page.

Once you’ve figured out your delivery method for students, it’s time to take your story outline and break it down into daily segments for your lessons. When I write the stories for my gaming narrative, I like to put them in a script format because my students enjoy taking turns being the different characters in our gaming narrative so the students volunteer to read the lines of each character. The fun that students have with this story format is one reason why use gamification is effective in the classroom.

You can go into as much detail as you want with these daily stories. For each gaming narrative level, I follow a rough outline to keep the story moving. At the beginning, I’ll establish the setting. For my Spanish class, it is a different Spanish-speaking country at each level. I’ll also introduce the boss that students will need to defeat early on so that they have a goal they are working towards. As we progress through the story, the student-heroes will learn and practice the skills (your content standards) that they will need to defeat the boss at the end of the level.

Once they are near the end, we will have a chance to practice the skills required and, when students are ready, they will fight the boss. Along the way, it’s fun if we have a near-miss with the boss before we are ready to battle or if the boss causes mischief in some way that affects the characters. You can make it as simple or complex as you want. This is one reason why use gamification in the classroom. It’s fun!

I know that there is a lot of controversy over the use of AI right now but hear me out. When I use AI to generate images for my students, I do not consider myself an artist. If I had an image budget, I would hire a real artist to create the images that I need for my classroom. I think artists get underpaid and they deserve to get paid fairly. However, I have never had a budget for images and I don’t think that the public school system will start paying for them either.

My old method of getting images was a Google Search which would result in sub-par images that don’t fit what I need in my classroom. It took so long that it had me questioning why use gamification in my classroom. So, while I would never want to replace an actual artist with AI, for my classroom needs, AI-generated images fit my needs the best and I am not taking money away from a real artist.

Some educators believe that AI is the end of all intelligent human thought and should not be used under any circumstances. While I understand the fear of students using AI to do their thinking/work for them (I’m a language teacher, and I’ve dealt with this issue with Google Translate for years!), I think that is a different issue. I do not allow my students to use any type of AI to do their language translations for them and I ensure this does not happen by assigning the translations in class with all devices put away.

But despite the issue of educating students on how to ethically use AI and how teachers need to still teach students to do their own work, I think teachers can use AI in a way that helps to engage our students better in the classroom. Because my students are so visual, using quality images has been a game-changer in how engaged they are in my academic content and I could not have obtained nearly as many relevant images if it weren’t for AI. Therefore, in my opinion, AI can be a powerful tool that helps teachers reach their students in a more engaging way. But I’ll leave the decision up to you.