No Whammies! press your luck edu-style

When I was a little girl I loved curling up on the couch to watch my favorite television game shows. The Price is Right, $25,000 Pyramid, Press Your Luck, Double Dare, Card Sharks, and Hollywood Squares are just a few of the shows that captured my attention. I loved the elements of chance, strategy, surprise, laughter, and contestant banter that hooked me from beginning to end and made me want to watch them over and over again. When I heard that they were bringing back some of my favorites from my childhood I was elated. As an educator who loves bringing reality game shows into the classroom, I knew that I would be able to take the inspiration from watching these shows and find ways to create magical learning experiences for students. I relived my childhood by curling up on the couch to begin binge watching one of my favorite reimagined classics, Press Your Luck. Sure enough, I found that this game show would be a great addition to any content area or grade level. Let me share with you the game overview and how you could create your own classroom edition for Press Your Luck.

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PRESS YOUR LUCK GAME SYNOPSIS:
This high energy game show fuses content knowledge, strategy, and chance as three contestants test their knowledge to earn spins which lead to money and prizes. To start the game each contestant collects spins by answering two rounds of trivia questions. The contestants press their luck on the 18-space gameboard by spinning for prizes and cash in hopes that they won’t press at the wrong time and land on a whammy that would take all of their money. They can also choose to pass spins to another contestant in hopes that they will land on a Whammy to deplete their opponents earnings.  The contestant who survives the gameboard round with the most money wins and proceeds to the bonus game. This game contains 5 rounds where the contestant can choose to take the money at the end of the round or press their luck and go to the next round where cash and prizes increase in value. If they land on a Whammy they lose all their money and prizes and if they hit 4 Whammies, the game is over. The first round has 5 spins, second round 4, third round 3, fourth round 2, and fifth round 1. If they reach $500,000 by the end of the game they can spin for $1,000,000,000. 

SPINNING YOUR OWN EDU-STYLE VERSION
​Press Your Luck is a great way to test your student’s content knowledge in a fun and exciting way. So how could you do this without the production company special effects to create an amazing learning experience for students? Check it out!

CLASSROOM EDITION
Pre-game: 
Have students create subject-related questions with three multiple choice answers as an activity in the days leading up to the game. This is a great way for students to dive into the content and help them review. Give students feedback on their questions and use them to build your question bank for the game. You can add some of your own questions too. What’s great is that these questions can be used year after year, so your question bank will keep getting better and better! To help visual learners, you can post each question on a Google Slide that you advance during game play so students can see the question as its being read. Click HERE for Press Your Luck slide template.

Set the Stage:

1. As students come into class on game day, have the Press Your Luck slideshow presented with the music from slide one playing. 
2. Have tables organized into teams of three or four with student names posted on the whiteboard, projector screen, or placed on table groupings. 
3. Students find their team location. 
4. Give each group a buzzer. You can find these awesome recordable game show buzzers on Amazon. 
5. Explain the game rules to students and give teams 5 minutes to strategize and select the order in which students will answer on each team.

Game Play:
Question Round:

1. Each team announces which team member will answer the first question. 
2. The person selected gets ready by placing their hand on buzzer.  If you don’t have a buzzer, they could slap hand on table, raise hand, or other method of your choice.
3. Read the trivia question out loud and as soon as a student contestant thinks they know the answer they press the buzzer and shout their answer. Finish stating the question, if haven’t already, and say the 3 multiple choice answers including the answer the student shouted out. The other teams all have a chance to guess before the correct answer is revealed. If the student who buzzed in first gets it correct, the team gets 3 spins. If they get it wrong, they get zero. Every other team who guessed correctly gets 1 spin. In the slide presentation (slide 25) tally the spins per team so you can keep track throughout the game. 
4. Teams select another person to answer the next question and the round progresses in the same manner until all team members have a chance to answer one question. 
5. You can determine how long you want this round to last by either setting a timer for a pre-determined amount of time or once each student has had an opportunity to answer a question. ​

Gameboard Round:
Now it’s time to spin the gameboard! 

1. I created a gameboard inspired by Press Your Luck that would be a great way to add similar gameshow excitement to the classroom. Project this video (slide 24) on your classroom projector screen. 
2. Beginning with the team who has the most earned spins, press play on the video and one person from the team turns around so they can’t see the gameboard. When they shout “stop”, the teacher stops the video to reveal either the dollar amount earned or a Whammy that takes away any of the team’s earnings. If that team still has spins they can choose to spin again, or pass the spin to the next team. 
3. Play continues to each team until all spins have been used. Teams with the most overall points wins the game. 

REMOTE CLASSROOM EDITION
This Press Your Luck inspired classroom game can be played in a remote learning environment as well using your video conferencing platform! 
Pre-game:
As in the brick and mortar game directions, have students submit their question prior to game day so you can build your question bank. A digital format such as Google forms would be any easy and efficient way to do this in a remote setting. 

​Set the Stage:

1. As students enter your video conferencing room on game day, have the Press Your Luck slide presentation screenshared with the theme song playing. (slide 1) 
2. Once all students have arrived, explain the game rules and divide students into teams. 
3. Send teams into break out rooms for 5 minutes (if your video conferencing platform allows) to give time for teams to bond and strategize. You can pop into each break out room during this time to answer any questions.

When teams come back you can use a few tricks to help organize teams. If you are using Zoom, you can use the virtual seating chart to drag and drop tiles into an order to best arrange teams into 3 or 4. If your students are able to use virtual backgrounds on their devices, you can also have each team use a specific theme to easily tell who is on which team. For example, team 1 is a beach theme, team 2 is space, etc. Since your students won’t have access to a buzzer, instead have students shout the name of their team when they think they know the answer. By doing this it will be easier for you to determine which team buzzed in first. If your students are using Chromebooks and unable to create a virtual background, you can also have them create a paper tent with the team number or name written on the front to place within view.

Game Play:
Question Round:

1. To start, one person from each team is selected to answer the first question. If using Zoom, you can spotlight the contestants selected for each question so they are the only ones showing on the Zoom screen. Find out how HERE under “Enhance Select Presenters and Group Work.” 
2. Game proceeds as in the directions for classroom play. You can keep tally on slide 25 of the presentation and screenshare throughout game. You can determine how long you want this round to last by either setting a timer for a pre-determined amount of time or once each student has had an opportunity to answer a question. 

Gameboard Round: 

1. When the question round has ended, students move on to the gameboard round. Share the screen to reveal the video gameboard (slide 24). 
2. Beginning with the team who has the most earned spins, press play on video and one person from the team shouts “stop” when they want the gameboard to stop. Stop the video immediately to reveal either the dollar amount earned or a whammy that takes away any of the team’s earnings. If that team still has spins, they can choose to spin again or pass their spin to the next team. 
3. Play continues to each team until all spins have been used. Teams with the most overall points wins the game. ​

HYBRID VARIATION:
Your current reality may be a hybrid situation where some students are brick and mortar and some are remote. In this scenario you could divide remote students up among brick and mortar teams and have them video conferencing in from a student device. Teams could have a device at their table to collaborate with students remotely. You could have the video conferencing screen projected as well so students feel connected to the whole class.

WATCH PRESS YOUR LUCK FOR INSPIRATION!
If you haven't had a chance to catch an episode of the ABC Press Your Luck game show yet, do it! You'll be able to understand the game play better and also come up with your own ideas for bringing your own edu-version into learning!

SHARE YOUR IDEAS!
Use these ideas as a springboard and create your own variation that works in your classroom scenario! Share your ideas and pics of gameplay on social media and tag me @tishrich on Twitter and @makelearningmagical on Instagram and add the hashtag #MLmagical! I’d love to hear what game magic you come up with!

Source for gameboard sound
All images in gameboard created on Canva.com