If you follow me much, you know that I am always looking for new ways to gamify my content. After 20 years of teaching mythology, I feel like I pretty much have my curriculum like I want it–except for one thing. It may just be my imagination, but students seem to study less and less. Each year as I prepare them for their first quiz over the Greek gods and goddesses, I keep wishing there was a way to help them learn the information in an engaging way. I have the Greek god and goddess posters on the wall. I have the Greek god and goddess presentation, and I have the multiple-choice quiz that I use to assess them. But there's one thing I don't have: a game to review the information the day before the quiz.
The solution to that? Secret Olympians. My students love social deduction games, and they love being competitive. Edutainment is rare, but it is possible. With Secret Olympians I give each of my students the role of a Greek god or goddess (secret, of course). With this secret identity comes an identity card with approximately 10-15 details about their character that they could give to other players when asked. Their mission is to determine the identities of their fellow players without having their own identities discovered. Did I mention anyone whose identity is discovered is eliminated from the game? Imagine Guess Who? mixed with Among Us.
I tried the game on a whim (as I usually do), and after a few moments of figuring out the rules, my students really ran with it. Since I have more than 16 students (and only 16 gods to learn), I divided the room into two groups. I had them circle up and start playing. Each player can do two actions (in any order): Ask another player to say a detail from their identity card or guess another player’s identity. However, there’s a twist. Once a player has guessed a certain player’s identity incorrectly, they cannot guess that player’s identity again for the rest of the game, so they have to play wisely. The strategy comes from players sizing up their list of clues and deciding which are the safest to give out first.
My students had a blast! They were yelling and laughing when someone was so sure they had someone’s identity down for sure and ended up missing it. When they had played all the way through, they asked to play again. I gave them new identity cards and away they went again.
If you think Secret Olympians would be a good fit for your classroom, check it out here. It’s a great way to review for a Greek mythology exam (or just to have a content-related fun day.)
Create Your Own Secret Identity Game
Is there a type of content you need to gamify? This game format is easily adaptable to whatever content you might be teaching. Do you need to teach details about the Founding Fathers? Renaissance thinkers and artists? Or famous poets? Make a card for each character and list out ten clues, varying in specificity. Distribute the cards secretly to your students and use the same Secret Olympians gameplay rules.
Pro Tip: I used Microsoft Word to create the bulleted lists of facts about each character. Then when I printed, I chose the option “6 pages to a sheet.” This made each page roughly the size of a playing card, so students could easily hold it in their hand.
Put A.I. to Good Use: Although I am thoroughly against students using A.I. in their composition process (more on that eventually), I do think it can be a useful tool for teachers. For this activity, ask A.I. to write a list of ten facts ranging from vague to specific about each of the characters you have chosen. Remember though, A.I. is notoriously error-prone, so you will have to fact-check these facts before you use them.