Gamified Homework: Climbing Homework Mountain

This gamified homework variation, although having a superficial similarity to its Climb Every Mountain counterpart, combines the idea of giving students a “free choice” of homework with clearly-structured limits as a way of achieving an ultimate homework goal (reaching the top of the aforesaid mountain).

Game Board

The basic idea here, therefore, is that students start at the bottom of Homework Mountain and gradual work their way to the top. How they do this – quickly and directly or slowly and indirectly – is entirely up to them.

Instructions

1. All students begin at the lowest level of Homework Mountain, on any Homework square they care to choose. The objective is to reach the Peak by answering questions as they climb.

2. Once a student has answered a question in one round of homework they then select and answer an adjacent question in the next. This continues until they reach the top or no more homework is set. Students can move from one square to the next in whatever direction they choose and there are different possible routes up the Mountain, with varying levels of difficulty:

  • A “direct route” for example, involves a student starting at the central 10-mark question, followed by the 20-mark question above it and the final 20-mark question above that.
  • A more-circumspect route, on the other hand, might involve a student working their way up the left-hand side of the Board, answering questions worth 2, 2, 6, 6, 10 and, finally, 20 marks.
  • 3. Once a student completes the question at the Peak they have finished. A possible variation here, however, is that having ascended Homework Mountain you can require them to safely descend by a different route to the one they took to the top.

    I’ve included an example Homework Mountain Board with questions covering Families and Households. I’ve left this in PowerPoint format for easy editing if you prefer to set your own homework questions. It also makes it fairly easy to refresh the Board with different questions when you move-on to a different Module.

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