1) I will show my students what games I have and we will decide which one to start with.
The students and I decided we would start with FIFA World Cup 2014. All of the students in my class are familiar with Soccer and reported that they like the sport. They were also excited that they would get the choice to choose a team from around the globe!
2) Have students sign up to show their interest in participating.
Eighteen out of twenty one students in my class signed up to participate. Here is a photo of the initial match ups!
3) Provide interested students with time to practice playing the game to familiarize themselves with the controls and parameters of the game.
The students were given two lunch time recesses to play around with the controls and become familiar with the controllers. I literally started up a match and had them play a bit and then pass the controller on to the next student. From what I saw and heard it looked like it was a good way to get them into it.
4) Create a tournament chart/schedule
I decided to pair students together (each get to play a half) and scheduled 5 games. The winner of each game moves on to the next round. The team who scores the most goals in the first round gets a bye to the third round. We will schedule games based on that.
5) Create and share expectations for students who stay in to compete and students who stay in to watch the competition(s).
All the students in my class are welcome to stay in to watch whether they are singed up to participate or not. The only expectation is that they are respectful of the students who are playing and of the other students in the room. Since the tournament only involves my class they are familiar with our class expectations and are to follow them when they are with me. When I start involving other classes we will take some recess time to go over what is expected if they would like to be included in the tournament.
6) Start the tournament and adjust and troubleshoot as needed.
The tournament is underway and the only thing I have really had to work on is how loud the students get! They are excited and I want to treat it like any other sporting experience but there is a limit on how loud they can be while they are in the classroom. Aside from that, things have been going well.
7) Share how things are going by blogging and tweeting about the experience - successes, issues, etc.
I took some photos today from our games and will be tweeting them out. I am also enjoying the fact that I am tracking the experience by blogging about it. I am not sure if I will track my experience as diligently in the next round with another class but would like to keep recording and sharing about the general experience of running a primary esports club/tournament.
My Vice Principal actually talked to me the other day about using school jerseys because the school just got new ones!! So my consideration may become a reality sooner rather than later. My other consideration about making the club/tournament available to other classes looks like it will be happening, it is just a matter of timing and scheduling.
I did have a quick lesson on the 21st Century Competencies the other day in order to formally introduce them to my students and to talk about how they would be integrated and observed in our esports club. This is new to them but with time and explicit experiences they will become part of our epsorts talk and actions and I would like that to carry over into the work we do in our classroom. It will be fun to introduce the competencies to the other classes I work with and then see if they use the language in their class with their teachers.
Looking forward to sharing more about the primary esports experience as things progress with the involvement of other classes.
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