Low-stakes, two minute competitive games via Zoom
September 28, 2020 11:03 AM   Subscribe

The one unambiguous no-exceptions success I have had with my virtual middle school students is an ongoing Rock Paper Scissors tournament bracket. They cheer each other on in the chat, they have made signs for each other, it is hysterical and a great team-builder. Tragically, we are nearing the end of the bracket and I need more ideas for something like that that's...not that, since we have done that.

I'm looking for something that meets all of these criteria
-mildly competitive
-extremely low-stakes
-requires no more than 5 minutes of class time
-works in the bracket format over time, which they love
-feasible over Zoom

Does not need to be educational, just needs to be something that would help build a little community in a silly way. I teach orchestra, if that gives anyone any inspiration.
posted by charmedimsure to Education (9 answers total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wonder if you could modify the game Anomia (or similar). Essentially, you yell out a word that matches the category flipped over.
posted by Ftsqg at 11:21 AM on September 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Odds and evens is a favorite of mine. One player chooses either odd or even, and on the count of three, both players put out a number of fingers, add them up and if it is odd or even and if the calling player was correct. I'd play best of three or best of five.
posted by advicepig at 11:21 AM on September 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


You can make online quizzes with Kahoot. The way I've seen it done is the whole class participates but I don't know if there's anything stopping you from just having 2-3 students participate with the winner moving on to the next match.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:24 AM on September 28, 2020


Ghost, maybe? A single round would probably take something like 2–3 minutes, so you might have to have a couple of games between each pair of players in each round.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:28 AM on September 28, 2020


Teach them rock-paper-scissors-spock-lizard? This was, annoyingly, A Thing on Big Bang Theory, but it is an actual playable game that's a generalization of rock-paper-scissors to five handshapes.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:36 AM on September 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


But also, honestly, probably part of why rock-paper-scissors is going over well is that it's kid culture, playground culture, and I'm guessing Zoom isn't leaving much room for expressions of kid culture. So maybe my suggestion isn't right and it's better to lean further in the direction of something that will feel like it's theirs.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:49 AM on September 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


On Roblox there is a super popular game where a word/phrase is put up and they have a couple of minutes to execute it (for your students it could be a paper they hold up to the screen or digital art they share; I would recommend the paper over digital as it gives them a few minutes break from the screen. Just give parents a heads up so they will have blank paper and art supplies on hand). You can do it in brackets so eventually the two best artists are against each other. Other kids can still draw the word/phrase even if they have been knocked out of the competition and hold it up to the camera for other kids to see.
posted by saucysault at 11:55 AM on September 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


This might be too low stakes... but Heads and Tails. Everyone chooses either heads (hands on head) or tails (hands on butt or hips). You flip a coin, everyone who guessed wrong sits down. Everyone still standing gets to choose one of the two options again until you're either left with a winner, or two people and you force them to choose different options to decide a winner.

I've only seen it played with large groups of adults but there's nothing complicated going on. You might need to modify it a little so it works in whatever camera view you have of your students.
posted by Trivia Newton John at 3:00 PM on September 28, 2020


I often play Countdown in my class! Here's an example of the actual game show in case you've never seen it, and here's a tool for picking letters/numbers.
posted by rjacobs at 10:04 PM on September 29, 2020


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