Build the Game You Wish Existed: Designing Lessons as Games
Summary:
Design classroom-ready games on a budget, align them to standards, and get unit plans for student game design—plus a free Drive folder with all materials.
Description:
Ready to bring game design into your classroom? In this session, a 14-year educator shares how to design small, engaging games aligned to academic standards—without blowing your budget. Learn practical strategies for turning learning objectives into game mechanics, printing materials affordably, and structuring lessons where the game is the instruction. You’ll also explore complete unit plans that guide students through designing their own academic games, building critical thinking, creativity, and systems design skills. Attendees will leave with access to a Google Drive packed with templates, examples, and ready-to-use resources.
Running Magic: The Gathering Club - Increasing Student & LGS Involvement
Summary:
Learn how to leveraged the "cool" teachers and LGS to increase student involvement, and how to used the same branding that Varsity Sports uses to celebrate MTG kids.
Description:
After having three years of afterschool Magic: The Gathering Club, this third year had the biggest student involvement (from 6 to 20 regular members), and the most involvement from our LGS. I'll also talk about no-cost things I asked for from my LGS to help parents and students get more involved in the club AND with the LGS.
What Teachers Want From the Games They Play In Class
Summary:
Two Middle School Teachers (with Elementary and High School Experience) will be talking about characteristics of effective classroom games, and what admin and teachers want from their games.
Description:
One teacher is from General Education, and the other is from Special Education, but both use different games as both learning and behavior tools.
They'll share how lessons are structured around the games, and what makes an effective game from a teacher and admin perspective.
Fixing, Adapting, & Making Your Own Games For The Classroom
Summary:
Games are a great and safe way to engage kids in their learning. I'll walk you through how I fixed and adapted established games, as well as how to think about making your own for the classroom.
Description:
As a teacher who loves games, I have been working for years on creating engaging experiences for my Middle School Math Classroom (don't stop reading! This can apply to many other grades and subjects!) I will walk you through how to "fix" already established games that ALMOST work, how to adapt established games that COULD work, and how I made simple games that PRETTY MUCH worked. If we have time, I'll walk-through a game-building review unit and some samples of students' work. I'll be handing out copies of the DIY games if interested and sharing a google drive with all the digital copies.
More Than Playing Magic: How I Structured An After-School Magic Club & Got Community Involvement
Summary:
What started as a group of kids that play Magic has turned into a structured club where kids learn deck building, strategies, and communication. This is about how to create and upkeep that structure.
Description:
Teaching kids how to play Magic: The Gathering is great, but what I found that's more fun is to teach them deck building, gameplay strategies, get the community involved, and get their parents to show up and play with them. I'll talk about how I structure my Magic: The Gathering after school club, the progression over the course of the year, how I reached out to the PTO for funding, and how my LGS and the community helped a ton. I'll post a google drive of all the flyers/signups/permission forms I talk about with a copy of the presentation!