Themes and Expectations: Level-Up Board Game Club Week 1 Recap

Level-Up Board Game Club kicked off this past Friday. It was a hectic day, as schools always are this time of year. Students and teachers alike are invariably sick, which means we're covering classes and handling a lot of overhead catching students (and parents) up on missed work, etc. That is to say that our usually calm Fridays turned busy quickly when I subbed a 6th grade history class and spent time in 3rd grade helping out during my planning blocks. Maybe that meant I had less time to prepare, or just less time to fret unnecessarily, but the end of the day came quickly and suddenly my now quiet classroom was filled with students not 15 minutes after the soft post-dismissal quiet had settled in.

I had students find seats at the makeshift tables I had arranged from the usual rows of desks in the room. We began by breaking the ice sharing names and our favorite games. I was impressed with the range of exposure to board games students were coming into the club with. Mind you, these are mostly second and third graders (approximately 7-9 year olds). Some were familiar with the big names—Chess, Monopoly, even Risk—while others mentioned Wingspan, Ark Nova, and Cascadia. Another, still, was adamant that Pokémon Labyrinth was the greatest game ever invented. All, however, were enthusiastic and eager to try new games out of their comfort zone.

Next I posed to them the question: If you could design a game about anything, what would you make a game about? I qualified this by saying that in 2025, you can basically make a game about anything, as there are games about birds, wizards, mushrooms, racing, politics, history, and everything in between. I explained to students that throughout the trimester, they would be working on designing their own board game with a unique theme. We started with this high-order question—what is the game about—before thinking mechanically so students can begin working from a reference point that they are familiar with, a hobby, genre, or activity that they are already familiar with, since that is likely more of a familiar anchor than beginning with the game mechanisms themselves. Over the next few weeks, students will be exploring different types of core, common game mechanisms (tile laying, dice rolling, card drawing) and thinking about how it could function with their design.

I gave students each a large piece of white construction paper and 10 minutes to begin sketching our their ideas using words, pictures, diagrams, or some other visual representation that begins to sketch out their idea for a game they want to make. I had imagined this as an individual activity, but immediately some students paired up to work on this project together collaboratively.

Students working on their designs.

After a brief work time and pair-and-share about what they had come up with, students were eager to play games. But first we sat down for a club meeting to set expectations for the club. I solicited some ideas for how we can keep board game club respectful and welcoming of everyone, and how we can keep the classroom and the games clean. Students volunteered answers and we created an anchor chart of club expectations that mainly revolved around:

1. Respect Each Other: using appropriate language and treating others in the game respectfully; being a good sport whether you win or lose (no sore losers, no sore winners); showing positivity towards other players in the game and how to be encouraging and how to handle a situation if you feel another player isn't being respectful.

2. Respect the Games: keeping track of pieces and making sure your play space is organized and tidy, routinely checking to make sure nothing has dropped on the floor; not bending cards; using careful hands; using the game pieces as they are intended to be used (they are tools for the game, not toys); and packing the game up just as, or better than, how you found it.

(Honestly, some adult game groups I've encountered aren't as self-reflective as these kids are).

The games I brought this week were Dragonwood, Planet, and Ticket to Ride—all games that I knew I could teach in mere minutes, that students could operate independently once I walked away from the table, and that were developmentally-appropriate examples of games that showed the diversity of themes that modern board games can have, covering fantasy, nature, and trains.

One of the students who was familiar with Ark Nova and Wingspan decided to help teach Ticket to Ride to a group while I introduced Dragonwood to another group. I'm reminded at this point that teaching a game to young players is not just about finding a game that is at the right level in terms of reading comprehension and the amount of information to keep track of, but explaining the concept and rules in terms that students can understand and relate to. Being a classroom teacher of this age range absolutely primes me for the vocabulary they will understand and how to explain things methodically and in the order they they will encounter them in the game. It's a different approach to the teach than I would take with a group of adults.

The Dragonwood game quickly did not require my help managing the game. Each of the players quickly took to the pattern of choosing one of three options to capture the Dragonwood cards based on the composition of their hands. By the end, a few of the students really took to a clever card management strategy relying on informed understanding of what was in the deck and the chances of building a stronger straight, pair, or color match set. One student stepped up to help manage the game, remembering to flip the new Dragonwood cards over, keep the decks organized, and consult the rules whenever there was a misunderstanding. Even one of my second graders who I knew came into the club with a lot less experience with games took to it and kept coming over to me wherever I was in the room and showing me her hand after drawing a new adventurer card saying "Hey, Mr. Pfister, look" with a big grin on her face.

The Ticket to Ride group was impressively independent and patient in teaching their peers unfamiliar with the game the rules. Although there needed to be a few reminders about how to engage respectfully with one another during the game, having those expectations to refer to was a big help in bringing students to mutual understandings. That group finished quickly and soon were interested in trying Planet.

Completed planets in Planet.

Midgame Ticket to Ride.

Students more than on the edge of their seats about to finish Dragonwood.

Planet is one of my favorite kid-friendly games. It has a setup that makes the pacing of the game very clear and features straightforward, easy to understanding tile drafting mechanism that can be as calculated or laissez faire as the player wishes. The planets themselves are also unique 3-D components that feel more interactive than just a tile tableau (although sometimes that makes them more difficult to interpret). It took a few turns for students to grasp how Planet deals with adjacency, but soon every player at the table was able to take a peak at the following rounds' animal card goals and make intentional choices about which tile to take and where to put it on their planet.

And that was all kind of the point. I never expect this club to be about every player at a table getting to the point of optimizing their player, making the best move every turn, or even becoming masters of a game. This club is about getting a taste of the flavor of many different games. It's about learning and building understanding through exposure, experiencing a smorgasbord of difference in order to help them discover styles of play that they like, or don't like. Ultimately, my goal in hosting this club isn't to create a new generation of gamers—although if a few students walk away from this club with a better appreciation of games and can convince their families to play board games together, I'll be chuffed. My hope is to provide a warm, welcoming space for this group to meet, laugh, and enjoy themselves each week, with every student walking out the door feeling lighter than than how they walked in.