Teach with Tournaments is a curriculum written by Josh Hoekstra, and was recently featured in a blog entry by William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education. I highly recommend that you read William Bennett’s blog entry, as it gives a very good summary of the idea successfully used by Mr. Hoekstra with his U.S. History students. I love the concept of having the students defend their “champion” by doing research, and I think that this might also be something that I could include next year as I attempt to “gamify” my classroom. It could also fit in nicely with the Genius Hour idea. In addition, I would suggest getting other classrooms involved through Skype or FaceTime, so that they could help determine the “Champions”, which might encourage the students to take their presentations to an even higher level (and discourage popularity contests). Kudos to Mr. Hoekstra for such a creative idea!
