Sporcle

Since students are mentioning it, I feel like I should explain Sporcle a little. Sporcle is an online game website, with user-created thinking games. I arrive a few minutes early to class and the students who are there and I play some Sporcle. It's fun. I let them choose which game ... most of the time ... and they shout answers and I try to type them in. We rarely can get all the answers right on one game, but it sure is fun to try.

I admit that the game may run into the first few minutes of class, but it's worth it. The game, which I play with all my classes, is more than just a fun thing to do. It wakes students up and it sets the comfortable, lively tone I strive for in class. Pedagogically, it makes sense to do something like this at the beginning of class. Furthermore, the games are sometimes relevant. One of my all-time favorites are Rap Lyrics in More Scholarly Language, which is relevant because it's thinking about the English language creatively and it has to do with the paper topic, which is pop culture. It also has a Literature category; though most of them are about Harry Potter and other popular novels, it does have some classics, like this game.