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101 Amazing Earth Facts Game

 

Subjects

  • Arts & Humanities
    --Language Arts
  • Educational Technology
  • Science
    --Physical Science
    ----Earth Science
    ----Environmental
    --Natural History
    --Space Science

Grades

  • 3-5
  • 6-8
  • 9-12

Brief Description

Play this Jeopardy-like game on Earth Day, or anytime.

Objectives

Students

  • read for comprehension.
  • work cooperatively to learn "101 Amazing Earth Facts."
  • compete as teams in a Jeopardy-like game.

Keywords

earth, Earth Day, planets, water, game, Jeopardy, Mars, storms, weather, earthquake, volcano, rocks, minerals, Solar System

Materials Needed

Note: Students might study the "101 Amazing Earth Facts," but it is probably best to print out the 9 pages of facts and to provide a copy for each student team.

Lesson Plan

In this lesson, student teams will use the resource 101 Amazing Earth Facts to learn some very interesting facts about Earth. To a large degree, this is a reading comprehension activity, but the facts are so interesting that students will be learning a lot of science too as they prepare to do battle against other teams in the class in a Jeopardy-like trivia game.

To use this activity as a classroom competition, arrange students into teams of five or fewer. It is best to establish teams that represent a mix of student abilities.

Using the game is simple:
  • Click the link to one of the games below. (If you do not have PowerPoint on your computer, you will need to download a PowerPoint Viewer.)
  • Press F5 to begin the slide show, then click the text that says "Click here to begin game" on the game's opening screen.
  • Choose a category and click on any point-value card to see the answer.
  • Click anywhere in the dark blue area that surrounds the game board, and the correct question/response will pop up.
  • Click the home icon at the bottom of the page to return to the main game board.

Provide each team with a copy of 101 Amazing Earth Facts. Inform students that their goal is for the "team" to know the facts better than all the other teams in the class know them (or better than the other teams in the school if you do this activity as a school-wide competition). Each team should appoint a "team leader" or "team captain." Instruct each team to come up with a plan that will help them know the facts best. Emphasize that their plan's ultimate goal should be that all members of the team know as many of the 101 facts as possible. Some possible plans might include

  • Teams members will divide the pages equally among themselves. All students will be responsible for reading their pages and making notes about important facts they think might be included in a game of knowledge. Then team members will come together to share important facts they have learned. All students might take notes about the facts. The team members might decide to exchange papers so they read a different set of pages for homework that night. The next day they come together to share more facts and to quiz each other on the facts they think will be included in a game of knowledge.
  • The team captain might take responsibility for "learning" the facts on more pages than he or she hands out to the other members of the team.
  • The team captain might take no pages for himself or herself. Instead, the captain divides all the pages equally among the other members of the team and has them read their assigned pages. Then the captain will use his or her time to create questions for a "warm-up competition" that will ready the team for the larger classroom competition.

When it comes time for the semi-final competition, introduce the game. All students will likely be familiar with the Jeopardy game show as seen on TV. The game you will introduce is similar except that

  • players play as a team.
  • players earn points instead of dollars.
  • players on the TV game can go into the hole (into negative numbers), but in this game there are no penalties for wrong answers.

Go over those "basics" and present the additional rules of the competition. (Feel free to adapt the rules below.)

  • Competition begins with the first team. You might decide who goes first by setting up envelopes, one envelope per team, and placing a coin of different value in each envelope. The team that draws the envelope with the highest-value coin will go first, the team that draws the envelope with the next-highest value coin goes second
  • The captain of the first team chooses the first question. He or she chooses a category and point value (for example, "Extreme Earth for 300 points"). That question is revealed and the emcee/moderator reads the answer. The emcee calls on the first member of that team to raise his/her hand; that team member must phrase a question that correctly matches the answer that appears on the game board.
    --- If the player's question is correct, the emcee awards the team the points and play moves to the second team.
    --- If the question is incorrect, no points are awarded and the second team has an opportunity to earn those points.
    --- If the second team does not earn the points, the emcee provides the correct question and the second team's captain gets to choose their first category and point value.
  • Play continues in this way until the game board is bare or time runs out. The team with the most points at the end of the game is declared the classroom champion.

If you are using this activity in your classroom only, then you might use "Amazing Earth Facts" Game 2

  • in the exact same way as you used Game 1.
  • as a game in which the two teams with the most points in Game 1 go at it head-head to determine the classroom champion.

Note: There is one fact -- fact #78 -- that we should point out before you use this resource. It is a fact that the author intends to be humorous, but a couple of our readers have expressed the opinion that it is inappropriate. That fact reads...

78. What is the hardest of all minerals?
The one that becomes emotionally useless after a divorce, but still retains monetary value.

Of course the precise answer is diamond. Each teacher must decide whether or not to use the game (with the fact included); we recommend simply explaining that the fact was the author's attempt at humor and leave it at that.

Assessment

You might create a true-false quiz that summarizes some of the most important facts learned in this activity and used in the game.

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Special Thank yous to

 
  • Rob Britt for granting permission to link to his terrific resource and
  • Elaine Fitzgerald, who built the beautiful PowerPoint game boards used in this lesson.
     

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

Use This Game In the Classroom

This activity could also be done as a classroom competition

Teams within the class take turns choosing categories and questions in "Amazing Earth Facts" Game 1 to determine the two best classroom teams.

Those two teams use "Amazing Earth Facts" Game 2 to determine the classroom champion.

 

Use the Game School-Wide

Students or teams within classes take turns answering teacher-created questions about the 101 Amazing Earth Facts resource. The five winners of the classroom competition become a team that will compete in the school-wide competition.

Classrooms teams use "Amazing Earth Facts" Game 1 as they compete head-to-head in semi-final match-ups. These match-ups are watched by the students in the two classroom only.

The two highest-scoring teams in the semi-finals use "Amazing Earth Facts" Game 2 to determine the school-wide champion. All teams come together to watch the final competition.
 

See more Lesson Plans of the Day in our Lesson Plan of the Day Archive. (There you can search for lessons by subject too.)

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Updated 04/05/2017