Meet Play Now: Turn One Topic into a Classroom Game

You have taught the topic. Now you want a classroom game to find out what students remember, without planning a whole new lesson.

Meet Play Now. Add a topic or teaching material, and it prepares a Question Set and a three-step activity path. You review them, choose a classroom and start when you are ready.

Give it one teaching job

Open your Deck.Toys dashboard and choose Play Now. Enter the topic or learning goal and select the grade level. You can also begin with teaching material.

A short topic can still be too broad:

Broad: Plants.

That leaves a lot open: plant parts, habitats, life cycles or photosynthesis? Tell Play Now what this particular review should check.

Focused: Grade 5 review of photosynthesis. Check that students can identify light, water and carbon dioxide as requirements, and explain why a green plant cannot photosynthesise in darkness. Students have already learned the parts of a plant and the basic photosynthesis process.

Change the grade and prior learning to match your class. Keep the goal small enough that you can explain it in one sentence: “Today we are checking what plants need for photosynthesis.”

Choose Set Up Play Now. Once the activity is ready, look through the questions and the proposed three-stop path. Our launch demo begins with a Word Cloud, moves into a game and finishes with a Quick Poll. Check your prepared path alongside its questions.

Two questions worth checking closely

Read the answers as carefully as the questions. A question can sound sensible while leaving room for more than one interpretation.

Use these two questions to check wording and answers in your Question Set.

1. During photosynthesis, which gas do green plants take in to make glucose?

• A. Carbon dioxide
• B. Oxygen
• C. Nitrogen

Answer: A, carbon dioxide. Naming photosynthesis matters. “Which gas do plants need?” would be too loose, because plants also use oxygen for respiration. If a student chooses oxygen here, ask them to distinguish the gas used in photosynthesis from the gas released by that process.

2. A healthy green plant has water and carbon dioxide available. It is kept in complete darkness. Which requirement for photosynthesis is missing?

• A. Soil
• B. Light
• C. Oxygen

Answer: B, light. Photosynthesis uses light energy. If a student chooses soil, ask what soil usually supplies and point out that this question already provides water. Avoid changing the question to “Will the plant die?”: that would involve other conditions and a timescale, beyond this review goal.

Check every item this way: does it test the stated goal, is the correct answer accurate, and could a second choice reasonably fit the wording? Check the activities too. Decide what you want students to recall at the start and explain at the end.

Then choose the classroom and select Start Play Now. Leave time after the game to discuss a question that divided the class; a correct choice is a useful starting point for an explanation.

Use Play Now when you want a focused review of something already taught. Choose a full deck when the lesson needs your own Slides, source material, branching routes or a sequence of clues. Our Paths and Activities guide gives you more room to plan that longer adventure.