I was at the conference this last weekend in San Jacinto and saw the pros demo Whole Brain Teaching. One thing that I saw that caught my interest, because of my students, was Mind Soccer. All I did today was tell my class we might play it, post the title page, and did the first step. They were so pumped that they didn't want to go home. I think this will become my new favorite review tool.

That is awesome! My advice as a semi-pro is milk it for all it's worth. Make them work hard to earn the priviledge of playing mind soccer! Use the scoreboard game to play You Bet Your Mind Soccer! And make sure they barely lose about half the time. Oh, you almost had it! Maybe tomorrow you will win it. Good luck! Keep it up! You are doing great!

I don't quite understand Mind Soccer. When I saw Chris Rekstad play it, it seemed like the eraser got moved only once and that all the other times it was rigged so that it never got moved. Of course, he didn't go through an entire game with us, so maybe it only looked that way. But I am wondering, does no one ever win?

We play until a team gets to 10, then we start back at 0. I keep track of the scores on my chalkboard, so the same game might go one for a few weeks. I keep the score bouncing back and forth until the very end.
My students love to play boys vs. girls. I have a class with only 4 boys and 12 girls, but the boys don't want the teams evened out, they have started studying hard, because they are bound and determined to beat those girls!

You can also keep the games running. My kids also love boys vs. girls. Keep a separate chart of the results each day with the first team to reach ten point winning, a game, and a match being the best two out of three games. A set is the best three out of five matches.

Make sure you never spend more than about ten minutes playing the game at a time. If you spend much more than that you will exceed their attention span, and the point of the game- to review- will be harmed.

Additionally, limiting play time keeps them hungry for more.

Do you rig it for the team you want to win? (with the free ball, steal, etc.) Do you try to keep the scores pretty close?

It doesn't usually matter to me which team wins, but I do rigg it to keep the scores close to each other. The hardest part for me is keeping a fast pace, I tend to want to slow down and give people more time than needed - but I am working on it!

Whenever we demo this at a conference it's hard to show all of the bells and whistles, but there is a video coming out real soon. The best thing to do is read up on the rules which are on this website.

This game is so cool because the only rule is "Keep the Ref Happy", you can change things to make them work for you and each of your classes.

Keep playing everyone and add whatever pieces of info you can to help us all out.

Chris

Chris did an awesome job of teaching it at the conference. He made it so much fun. I can't wait to try it!