Using Games to Engage Your Students (Ep. 378)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Guess what is happening next week? It is time for the Summer NOW Conference. I cannot wait. You’ve already heard me talking about it a lot, but the conference is always my favorite time of the year. Three days of learning, a couple of great opportunities to hang out with our art teacher community, and just a lot of inspiration for the upcoming school year. So I’ll talk more about NOW. If you’re not familiar, I’ll give you the details about the conference at the end of the show.

But for the moment, let’s talk about today’s episode. My guest will be Nic Hahn, or as many of you know her @MiniMatisse on Instagram. And Nic is one of my very favorite people in art education, and I have looked up to her for a long time. I always love how willing she is to try new and different things, and more importantly, how willing she always is to share what it is that she’s doing. Nic did elementary art for a while. She hosted a podcast here at AOEU with us for a while, and now she’s off on some other adventures that I will let her tell you about. But I’m excited to have her on the podcast today.

I’m excited to have her at the NOW Conference next week as a presenter. She will be talking about building relationships and getting students engaged using all kinds of different games. I love the idea of games in the classroom, but even more than that, I love the idea of having something fun that creates connections and creates community in the art room. It’s something that has become increasingly challenging in the past couple of years, and I think if you’re amenable to trying some of these things in your classroom, you could see some real benefits. So let’s get Nic on here to tell us all about that.

All right. Nic Hahn is back on the podcast with me. Nic, great to have you here. How are you?

I’m so good. I had to dust off all this equipment, but I’m ready. I’m ready for it today. Yeah.

All right, good. Like I said, I’m thrilled to have you. So super excited you’re here. It’s been a while, like you said, but can you just give us an update on… I don’t know what’s going on with everything you’re doing professionally. Just tell us what you’re doing these days.

Yeah, it’s changed a lot in the last year. So at the end of 2022, I had submitted my paper to take a leave of absence from education. I took a one year leave, and I just really needed to explore my own art is what I was kind of going for. So it was called a Career Exploration Leave. That really led to a lot of things throughout the year, I ended up exploring my illustration, which was great. I took tons of classes. I started selling things on Etsy and at craft fairs and a local consignment shop, some prints that I had done, and even a calendar. I made a calendar, Gluten-Free in 2023. Yeah. It was fun. It was fun. It was a good experiment. I discovered I am not a salesperson. I don’t like any of what I just mentioned.

Okay.

Yeah, it was a good discovery there. What I ended up doing is some of the other things that I had planned on doing, which is subbing. I needed to do subbing to kind of figure out if I wanted to go back into education in a traditional sense. I had been there for 20 years, but taken a little step back and going back in as a sub. I did some Artists in Residency, some speaking engagements with IAEA, Illinois Art Educators, and just really explored what else there is in art as far as that goes. But then I signed my paperwork to come back to education, and I was getting myself psyched up for that when Moxie Box Arts approached me and asked if I would work with them. So that changed my course completely. I am now working full-time for Moxie Box Art, and then I’m doing a little side gig with Art to Remember, which has been a tradition for me. I’ve worked with Art to Remember for many years. So just kind of continuing the relationship with that.

Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah, I love Art to Remember, because they have sponsored the NOW Conference for us for a long, long time.

A long time. Yeah.

Can you just kind of tell people what you’re doing with them, what your work with Art to Remember involves?

Yeah. I think most people probably know what Art to Remember is. It’s a fundraising company for art programs. So I had been using it for, I want to say 10 years, it was a long time, in my classroom where the kids would make a piece of artwork, we would send it into Art to Remember. We’d get back some really nice order forms, and this became a tradition in my school. What Art to Remember had utilized me for is kind of some, “How’s it going in the classroom? What could we do to improve it?” And then they also had me making some lesson plans, the lessons that I was doing for my classroom. I made them so that I could share.

Now, in this capacity, I’m doing similar things. They basically are utilizing me as a teacher. What is going to make education easier for art teachers out there? I’ve done some timers, so art timers that you can use digitally. I’ve used my illustration skills and worked on messy mats with them. I think we’re on third generation of messy mats. They’re always so fun to make. We have a couple of things up our sleeves that we haven’t announced quite yet, but those are the main things that I’m working on right now.

Nice. That’s really cool. Those all sound really helpful and really spectacular things that, like you said, can make a teacher’s life easier.

Yeah.

Then I guess the main reason I wanted to have you here today was to kind of talk about what you’re going to be doing at the NOW Conference. You have a really fun, I guess, presentation coming all about games in the classroom and games as relationship builders. So I would love for you to talk about that and just kind of tell us in general terms why you think the types of games that you’re talking about work so well for the classroom and just how and when you use them.

Yeah. I’m thrilled to be bringing this presentation to AOEU because it is something I truly believe in, I’ve experimented with for a whole year, and it was a game changer for sure. As we all know, education has changed in the last couple of years, and it has forced us to move away from art education just a little bit and maybe concentrate on our SEL issues a lot more. And instead of resisting that, this is what we say at The Art of Education University when I was working there too. Instead of resisting it, embrace it and try to figure out what we can do to make it the best that it can be. So that’s what I decided to do.

We were presented professional development at the beginning of the year where we played little mini games, like mini game after mini game after mini game. And we had so much fun as an education group. So I thought, what if I brought that into the classroom as well? We had used pennies for the professional development, so I decided to call them Penny Games in my class, and the first one that I did was I challenged the kids to see if they could spin the penny the longest. Super easy. Now, what this involved at the beginning was I gave them pennies if they were meeting my desired behaviors that day.

Okay.

And then whoever had a penny at the end of the hour got to spend the penny in the last five minutes, and we celebrated and whatever. That was kind of the start of it. It went okay.

All right.

But what I discovered is I’m terrible at handing out a thing, like really bad.

Because you’re busy teaching. Right?

I am. That’s right. That’s what I was doing.

I’m the same way. Reward systems are tough because I’m busy with other things.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. And it just isn’t my style at all. So I decided to change it just a little bit. We ended up doing maybe a table like, “Red and green table, you’re going to play the penny game today,” or a lot of the games ended up being full group, which was really beneficial as well. They were five minute games at the end of every hour. So I had the kids for one hour, 35 sessions a year, 800 kids coming through, kindergarten through fifth grade. That’s kind of the setting that I was in. And we played this no matter if you were a kindergartner or a fifth grader. What was required is you had to work the hour. As a class, you had to clean up in a responsible and quick way. Those were the main things. And if they earned the Penny Game, they got to play it. So we have a winner at every game. And you know what they get?

Oh, I’m intrigued. What do they get?

They get a high five from me. I know, you’re jealous. Yep. That is it. Yeah. They get a high five. And the first time that I did that, the kids looked at me like, “Okay, thanks.” But I will tell you, they were like, “Hey, you forgot the high five,” because I was like, “Oh, you won.” Then I’d have them line up, and they’re like, “Well, don’t I get the high five?”

I love it.

So yeah, it ended up being fine.

I feel like high schoolers would begrudgingly accept that and then eventually kind of enjoy the cheesiness of it and it really could go all right.

Yes. And I think that was the thing, especially even the fifth graders. You’re right. Embracing the cheesiness of it, and I’m fairly cheesy myself in the classroom, so it worked out really well. Basically, I saw a TED talk from Rita Pearson who said this, “Students don’t learn from who they don’t like.” And that’s what was the game changer. This is why I started bringing this into the classroom. It was because I wanted to make sure that not only… Well, if I went by what she said, I had to create a relationship with 800 kids in order for them to become engaged in my class. So that was a big reason why I brought the games in.

I really love where all of this is going. I love the idea of being able to build those relationships with hundreds and hundreds of kids because those elementary art teachers have so many things that they need to do. Then it seems like an easy way to get those relationships going. But I guess my question to follow that up is, what kinds of reactions do you get from kids when you’re playing these games? What do they think at first? Then once you get into the process, how much are they enjoying that? How much are they looking forward to it?

Yeah. I think for myself even, there was some questions and worries to begin with. No, I only have them for an hour. How in the world? We have to create, we have to make, how am I going to get this in? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. But then I thought, well, let’s try, I love learning things. I love trying new things, so let’s try it. So I did. The first week, I’m not exaggerating when I say it was fairly bumpy. I had to get into the groove of making time for this, explaining it to the students to begin with. Then once we went into one or two weeks, now the kids know what I’m talking about and they’re asking about it. “Hi, welcome to art.” “Do we get to play a Penny Game?” I mean, it replaced the, “What are we doing today?” question to, “Do we get to play a penny game today?”

Okay.

The answer is always, “Yeah, if you guys earn it. No problem. Let’s play it.” So it became an incentive for sure. I know in my school, the homeroom teachers would come and pick up the students from the door, and I’d open up the door to indicate, “Yeah, we’re done.” But most often, we were still playing a penny game, and the teachers would stand at the door and kind of observe this and watch the pure joy that was happening in my classroom.

I love it. I love it.

Oh, it was great. It was great. And a lot of the teachers ended up bringing it into their own rooms. Okay, what was the penny game this week? Well, we can play it two or three more times in the classroom.

Okay. Nice.

It was really, really good. I was worried about some students feeling left out.

Yeah. That kind of crossed my mind when you were describing this.

Right. Yeah. So some tables, red and green, like I was said, is going to play the game today. What happened was we had an audience that supported and cheered on the participants, which was so much fun to watch. Like, “Here, cheer them on.” And then I was sure to rotate the tables that participated. Honestly, in my school of 800, there was two students that preferred not to play.

Okay.

Two. Those are some pretty good odds. They were excited and it was engaging. I did not give a physical reward. I was worried about the high five being enough. But as we discussed, it was. I mean, rightly so. A high five for me? Come on.

Yeah. That’s a big deal.

It is a big deal. Sometimes the classes didn’t earn the penny game. They didn’t clean up in time. And speaking of cleanup, I was mostly worried about that. But I will tell you, my cleanup time was cut in half because-

Because it was an incentive.

There was an incentive. And they’d yell at each other, “Get this clean because we have the penny game.” You don’t want them yelling at each other. But yes, it really told me how much it meant to them. But I have high expectations. So if the class behavior didn’t really match or they didn’t clean up, we’d take that five minutes and have quiet time. So I still kept it, but we’d just go, “You know what? Let’s relax today. Let’s think about how we did today, and let’s make a change for next time.” And then the next time I’d make notes of, “Hey, you want to play that penny game today? It’s going to be fun. Let’s make a goal of that. Okay?” So it was good. Every single time a student walks into my classroom, it’s a new day. And that was a way of telling them that. It’s a fresh start. You get to play the penny game today if you earn it. So they ended up loving it a lot.

I used it also in other capacities, such as when I was a sub. I would pull that out. And I subbed in all grade levels. So what was fun was knowing that these penny games worked kindergarten through 12th grade. I also brought them into my Artist in Residency and found the same thing, the middle schoolers that I was working with absolutely… Actually, they loved it more than the art that we were making.

I can see that.

I’m not going to lie. I mean, I had some pretty cool art stuff for them, but they really wanted the games.

Doesn’t compare with the games.

Yep. Yep.

Cool. Well, hey, I’m just thinking, I don’t want you to give too much away from your presentation in a couple weeks, but can you share maybe, I don’t know, a few games, like three games that you think are really fun? Ones you really like, or ones that students really respond to.

Sure. Yeah. Okay. One that they really respond to that’s a really, really responsive one is whole class. It’s called Boom Clap Grab. And I’ve seen other versions of this online, but those are the… Well, I used a different word initially and I’ve changed it to Grab. Boom means that you hit the table, clap means that you clap. Yeah, we got that. And then grab, there’s a marker in between two people across from the table, and they go to grab that marker. So I’ll say, “Boom, boom, clap, boom, clap, grab.” They all go to get that marker. Whoever gets it makes a big deal of it. And then I yell out, “Boom.” It’s amazing. They all slap their hands down and it’s silent. And they got their game eye on again. So I ended up using that quite a bit for classroom management, where I just say, “Boom,” they all slap the table.

Oh, nice.

So it really turned into something in my classroom. It was great. Another game that was super fun, I did this often with a partial group. I would bring a couple of tables up and we’d play Marker Toss. This is something I did in the middle school when I was in charge of lunch duty, and I had to entertain kids so that they did not destroy things in line for lunch. So put a marker on the back of your hand, toss it up into the air, keep your hand palm down, and grab that marker before it hits the ground. And this is hard to explain a little bit on podcasts, but that’s basically what you’re doing. You’re tossing it up and grabbing it, but your hand is always facing down. Your palm.

Yep. So the marker’s sitting on the back of your hand.

That’s right. Yep. Yep. So now, whoever was successful with that… If you weren’t successful with that, you put your marker back. If you were, you gain a marker. So now you have two markers on the back of your hand. 1, 2, 3, toss up, catch. Yes. Some people make it, some people don’t. This continues. Usually we could get about five markers before-

I kind of want to try this right now.

Just wait one minute. But yes, we’re almost done, Tim. Then you can try that. It’s super fun. Another fun game is I used games that I learned from my past. There is one, maybe you’re familiar with it. It’s called Beer Pong. Wait, no. In the classroom, we call it Ping Pong Cup or something like that. What I would do is line up two sides of the class. So there’d be two long lines of half a class on each side. I’d have a cup in front of each of the people in the front of the line, and one ping pong ball. The person on the, let’s say, right side would bounce and try to get it into the cup. If they get it, they get a point for their team. Then they’d go to the back of the line. The next person would grab the ping pong ball, wherever it landed, inside or out, and try to bounce it back into the other one. This would go on back and forth until… Usually I use a timer. That gives us a strict end time.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So that was a really fun game. Went really fast, very exciting. Lots of people cheering for that one. I absolutely loved it. And then, Tim, I know you asked for three examples, but I’m going to give you one more at least tool. The tool that we used, and this is in the Swag Boxes, and I’m so excited that Art to Remember, said they trusted me and they said, “Okay.” I asked for mini hands, these hands that fit on your finger. Have you ever seen those?

Well, I’ve seen them now that I have my Swag Box. I’m just thinking of all the people who are opening up their Swag Box. They’re like, “What are these things? Why are these in the Swag Box?”

So these are, what do you think? Like a one and a half inch hand?

Yeah. I’m holding up my fingers to show how big.

Yeah, you see that podcast people? Yes. Okay.

No. Yeah. One and a half or two-inch tall entire hand. Yeah.

Entire hand that fits on your one finger. They are creepy as candy.

But hilarious. They’re creepy, but so funny.

Hilarious. So we use those. If I ever want to take the same game and use it the next week, I just introduce the mini hands to it, which makes it more difficult, makes it more silly. It’s so much fun. I use these mini hands to introduce things under the dot cam. I’ll pull one of those out. Oh, they’re grossed out. It is so great. So engaging. I’ll give them to the students when they’re talking about their art. Whoever has the mini hand gets to actually point to the things on their cards.

I love it. Yes.

So you can use these mini hands for lots of things, but definitely in the Penny Games.

Okay. Those are great. Okay. All right. Last question. I love to close the podcast with advice when we can, and this seems like a good opportunity here. Do you have any advice for teachers on why they should implement some of these games into their classroom during this upcoming school year?

Yeah, absolutely consider this, but it does have to match your personality a little bit.

Yeah. Fair.

I’m not saying this is perfect for everyone, or the right answer by any means. This was the right answer for me, and it might be the right answer for you. For me, it brought me joy in a year I needed joy. That was a big thing. It brought me joy when I needed joy, and it brought the students joy as well. I feel like we created memories that will last their whole life. I don’t know if my art projects always did that. I feel like sometimes these activities are going to be more long lasting, and maybe not the activity, but the feeling of when I walk into Ms. Hahn’s classroom, I know that we’re going to play a game and we’re all going to have fun, and we’re all going to laugh at the end. That’s the feeling I want them to walk away from.

I’m going to share a lot more at the conference and a lot more about the Penny Games themselves, giving more examples. But probably with the podcast notes here, I’m going to include my… I have a Teachers Pay Teachers resource for this because it took me so much time to implement this into my classroom and figure out all the games I thought I’d just can it and put it into TPT. If people want it, then it’s there. Every game has a slide that shows the materials, it shows the written instructions, and then it shows a video action of students actually playing the game. So it’s pretty beneficial if you’re going to implement this. Otherwise, you don’t need me. You don’t need anything from me. All you need is this concept and these creative people that we are speaking to right now. Their brain is going to start working on this, and they’ll come up with their own if this is the right fit for them.

For sure. That’s awesome. All right. Well, Nic, thank you so much. Super excited to have you back on the podcast. Super excited to see you at the conference very soon. So it’s been good to reconnect and thank you for sharing all of this with everyone.

Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Tim.

All right. Thank you to Nic for sharing all of that. As I said at the beginning of the episode, as I think we mentioned in there, she is at the NOW Conference next week as a presenter, and she’ll be giving a presentation on games and how you can build community in your classroom, how you can make connections, how you can engage students using all of these different games. Then in the Afterpass on Friday, our day of asynchronous learning, she has a longer video that adds even more games to your repertoire.

As promised, I would talk more about the conference at the end here. So if you’re already registered, know everything about it, you can just shut it off here. That’s fine. If you want to learn more, I will give you a quick rundown of what’s happening at the rest of the conference. So on Wednesday the 26th from 7:00 to 9:00 PM Central, we have the conference kickoff. We play a really fun game. It’s going to be Let’s Make a Deal this year. And we have all kinds of prizes and giveaways, and we have art making sessions as well. So a lot to do, a great opportunity to hang out with some art teaching friends, have some fun and create some art.

Okay. On the 27th, on Thursday, that is the main event. That is the live portion of our conference. That starts at 10:00 AM Central, goes until 3:00. You have a full day of presentations designed all for art educators on a plethora of different topics. You can check out the whole lineup online and see everything that’s going to be available.

Then starting on Friday the 28th, you have the Afterpass, which has even more presentations. You can rewatch anything from the main event. You can rewatch the art making presentations from the kickoff. Then there are an additional 15 presentations that weren’t even in the main event, and you have access to everything for an entire year. And like I said, the lineup is great. We have stuff on building relationships. We have presentations on teaching with intention and joy, more strategies like what Nic talked about. But even moving beyond that with student engagement, with storytelling through art and drawing prompts. We have a lot on creativity and creative thinking through ideation.

One thing I’m really excited about on Thursday, the main event, is a round table discussion with teachers sharing all about reflection and adaptation as we move into this coming school year. So if all of that sounds good to you, if you think that’s going to be worthwhile and you want to register, head over to the ArtofEducation.edu/NOW. You can get even more info and find everything that you need to know about the event. I hope we’ll see you there.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. A quick update, we have our August Mailbag episode coming out in a couple weeks, so please send us your back to school questions. Anything that you want answered about back to school, getting started again, Amanda and I would love to hear that. We’ll have that episode for you the first week of August. All right. Thank you for listening, and we’ll talk to you next week, which is conference week. Can’t wait.