Student-Designed Games: Strategies for Promoting Creativity, Cooperation, and Skill Development

Students love games, but unfortunately, games are often taught in ways that alienate or exclude less-skilled students. Or worse yet, students find the games boring because they have no voice in how the games are played.

Student-Designed Games: Strategies for Promoting Creativity, Cooperation, and Skill Development helps teachers and youth leaders make games fun again. This innovative, step-by-step guide helps students from early elementary school through college design their own games. In doing so, students

• develop tactical understanding as they design games;

• feel ownership and are more motivated to take part in the games;

• feel included because they have a voice in the scoring, equipment, space, and rules, all of which are limited only by their imagination and available resources; and

• learn how to respect competitors and work toward common goals with partners.

Through Student-Designed Games, students discover why rules are important, work cooperatively through the creative process, solve problems, and teach each other as well as their teachers. In games-making units, students design games within parameters presented by the teacher. They can adapt games they already play by changing various elements, or, with the help of game templates, create unique games that present new tactical problems that players must solve or overcome.

The games can all be connected to standards for becoming physically educated as defined by local, national, and international organizations and include ready-to-use assessments so that teachers can evaluate both the students and the games. The book also includes rubrics to help students understand their responsibilities during the game-making process and to judge the quality of the games they have created.

Student-Designed Games is the perfect book to help students be inclusive and creative, learn basic game forms, improve skills, and have great fun in devising their own games. Teachers will be aided in managing their classes through the detailed management strategies aimed at including their students’ time on task. As such, Student-Designed Games is a valuable addition to teachers’ class resources.

Peter Hastie, professor in the department of kinesiology at Auburn University, has been teaching strategies for student designed games in both schools and universities. He has also researched the potential of student designed games to help students become more engaged in physical education, as well as develop a deeper understanding of games. Dr. Hastie is a member of AAHPERD, American Educational Research Association (AERA), and International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP). He enjoys whitewater rafting, traveling, and overland trekking.