Raising Jordans

We all know how much I love to design curriculum from scratch for my students.  Yet it has been such a long time since I shared one of the resources I have developed for my classroom.  Life has been so grad school centric, which when compounded by the regular of end of the year school year crazy is leaving me with little time for much else.  So in honor of the last day of school here is one of my favorite lessons I have created -Guess who? I originally saw the idea of converting an old Guess Who? game into an educational resources on Pinterest and began scrounging for old game boards so my students could make their own.  However, even the Salvation Army prices were too rich for my blood so I decided to design and create my own game pieces that can be simply printed and constructed in the classroom.  

I have done this mostly with upper Elementary School and Middle School aged students and they have loved it.  The project takes multiple lessons, the number of which has varied based on the abilities of my group of students at the time.  This lessons has been such a hit. I have had colleague after colleague beg me to share it.  Every school I have taught it in I have had to run off extra copies of the samples to leave with my teaching partners.  So trust me your kids will love it, they will learn a lot and have fun doing it.

This lesson is aligned with the social studies curriculum and standards. It is particularly great for boosting independent research skills.  I always bring in several books, encyclopedias, magazines and websites on historically significant people that the kids can explore.  I also give my students a list of some famous names broken up by occupation to spark their research. Below, I have included my list of people for the Canadians among us.

As your students build their games, they will be learning about multiple famous historical figures and what about them made them so pivotal to us today.  Then once game play commences they will learn about figures they didn’t research on their own as they ask their opponent questions to try and  Guess Who? their famous person is.   One important note is that I am a originally a Canadian Teacher so the lessons instructions are for Famous Canadians, but all of you south of the border can adapt that to be famous Americans.

So without further ado,

Here is the lessons directions: Guess Who? Directions 2

Here are the game pieces:Guess Who Game 

Here are your cards: Guess Who Cards

List of Famous Canadians: Important People List

Like always, please use, distribute and enjoy.  Be sure to give me feedback! I love hearing from all the teachers using my materials.

P.s. for those of you who were asking. I have designed all my materials using simple word processing and Mac Software.  However, thanks to my graduate electives and formal training in instructional design this summer I now am bolstering some skill in photoshop and indesign. So the resources should just keep getting better and better from a design sense.