Using a GAME plan with my students

When I first began thinking about using the GAME plan, I really only thought about its practical uses for teachers. It really helped me oraganize my thoughts. I have been able to stay focused on my goals and the actions I must take to complete those goals. After thinking about it, I believe it will also be useful to my students.

I think that I can use the GAME plan in different ways to set/achieve long-term and short-term goals with my students. First of all, I teach third graders who have to take our state standardized test for the first time at the end of the year. To them, the MCT is an abstract idea that has very little meaning to them. I think that it would be a good idea for us to create a class GAME plan to help us stay focused on our goals for achievement on that test.

I also would like to use a GAME plan with our upcoming science project. My students have never done science projects to be submitted in our district science fair before. I think it would help them feel less overwhelmed if they created a GAME plan to help the identify the goals and actions that they must take to complete their science fair projects. We could check on our GAME plan every few days to see if we are progressing as we need to.

Overall, I do believe that I will use GAME plans with students especially if I move back to older students who will have to monitor their own progress during class projects.