Each player takes turns searching the stack for up to three map cards. Each card has a representation of either a war, a battle, a feature, a map or an officer with brief descriptive caption. The backs are color coded for each category and stamped with the name of the category. This battle was fought two weeks after England surrendered. Design Process I started by considering my audience and their needs.
History requires a large amount of memorization.
By connecting visual images into a pattern, recall of the facts will be enhanced. I considered putting the name of the item on the card so that the only thing left to identify would be the war that it belonged to. I decided that the extra challenge of having to identify the feature, officer or battle in addition to correctly linking them with a war would be much more interesting. The game could be played before the war unit is taught as a pre-test of what the students know, and then at the end of the unit to measure growth. Another idea that is operable is allowing players to have bonus points during the play, rather than at the end when the scores are tallied.