I’ve made it no secret on this blog that I love games and gamification. So, naturally, a core part of the gaming experience- i.e. competition- is a topic I’ve spent a lot of time studying and observing.
This blog entry seeks to define and break down competition in the classroom. Specifically, healthy competition and how I believe it can be used to drive student engagement, achievement, and fun.
Defining Healthy Competition
First, I need to define my term. Competition and competitiveness is something I believe needs to be carefully regulated and monitored. Left unchecked, competition can manifest feelings of spite, anxiety, and a “win at all costs” mentality that can lead to people doing dubious things to secure a victory. It can also lead to a sense of apathy or detachment: think the “I’m never going to win, so why even try?” attitude.
So, what do I consider “healthy” competition? First and foremost, a healthily competitive environment doesn’t overuse competition. There’s a time and place for everything, and there are times in class when winning or being first should not be the goal. This directly ties in with my next point, which is stakes. I firmly believe that the stakes for in-class competitions should be meaningful to the students, yes, but they should also be low enough that not winning doesn’t cause distress.
For example: I recently worked with a co-teacher to create an Escape Game for our class to review vocabulary and concepts from our recent unit. Personally, I think the thrill of winning can be utilized as a reward, but, in order to hook all students with your concept, offering a meaningful but low-stakes prize to the winners can be helpful. For instance, during the Escape Game, which was designed as a race, the team that finished first was awarded +2 points of Extra Credit on an upcoming debate assignment. This is a small prize that won’t radically change anyone’s grade on the assignment, but still matters to the students.
A non-example of an appropriate prize would be basing the students’ base grades on an assignment on how they did in the race: i.e. 1st Place would get an A, 2nd Place a B, 3rd Place a C, and 4th Place a D. To be clear: this is something you SHOULD NOT do. This demonstrates a jump to unhealthy competition, namely where students are competing over finite quantities of a reward that matters too much to them. Zero-sum games like this, where, in order to win, another team must lose, need to have low stakes in order to succeed in the classroom.
Positive examples of healthy, small, but still meaningful prizes for winners include: a winner’s photo that can be displayed on a winner’s wall, writing the winning individual or group’s names on the board, letting the winners choose a school-appropriate song to listen to at the end of class, extra credit (sparingly, as mentioned), homework passes, or letting the winners choose a larger activity that the whole class will participate in. Get creative: students appreciate small gestures and will work hard for them without becoming anxious about what will happen if they don’t win.
Finally, a critical ingredient of healthy competition is creating an environment that focuses on the fun. Winning is the cherry on top of the sundae, but, if you don’t win, you still get the sundae. That’s not to diminish, at all, the disappointment students may feel if they don’t win, but my approach to disappointment isn’t that it needs to be avoided, but that it needs to be dealt with. Reframe a close loss as the ability to come back for the win next time. Don’t invalidate, but don’t encourage dwelling on a loss.
Competition in Class
Now, let’s look at some of the different models of competition that can be used in a classroom setting. There may be more than you think!
Student Vs. Student
This is probably the first one that comes to mind when “competition in class” is mentioned. Individual students competing against each other, one winner, maybe a podium, pretty standard model, can be used for a lot of cool things.
Student Vs. Self
This is the High Score model of things, which can be used to create a lot of intriguing scenarios! One piece I love about this model is that it’s naturally scalable to look at improvement. There’re few things so satisfying as doing measurably better at something than you did before and, even if you fall short, you’re still the one who set the number you’re trying to beat.
Team Challenges
Did somebody say teamwork? Competition is a natural vessel for developing and strengthening student bonds with each other. Whether it’s a team assembled especially for the occasion or a year-long group bonding over shared challenges, encouraging the intrapersonal skills demanded by teamwork is a smart strategy for infusing social skills into your curriculum.
Students Vs. Teacher
One of my favorites! This model creates a unified team by pitting all students against the teacher, either competing in a challenge made by the teacher or competing against the teacher in a sort of boss battle format. One thing I like to do when using competition in my own classes is regularly changing up the teams. You want students to have the opportunity to work with and against each other at one point or another throughout the year, and, in my experience, students generally find it satisfying to successfully strategize and best their teacher.
Student Engagement
This point is pretty self-evident, but it does bear mentioning: injecting a bit of healthy competition into your classroom does wonders for student engagement. I’ve been taught, throughout my teaching career, that the way to create an environment of student engagement is to provide students with authentic experiences that matter to them. The “to them” part is especially important to consider. It can be tricky to put yourself in the headspace of a middle grade student (or whatever grade level you teach). One thing I’ve found continuously true, though, is that the drive to win, to compete, to show off a little is a truly an authentic goal for most students.
It may not matter beyond 4th Period, but it matters then, and that’s the power of competition that I encourage tapping into. Another personal example: in the Escape Game I mentioned earlier, students effectively had to define vocabulary, synthesize topics, work on a group writing assignment, and make connections to prior knowledge in order to be successful. Had I made that a packet of work or even a Google Classroom assignment, I sincerely doubt we would’ve gotten the same level of engagement and excitement over doing this work.
Competition and gamification can be integrated into any classroom to any degree. It’s totally up to the teacher, but there’re no subject or grade-level prerequisites that need to be filled to create a game for your class.
The Possibility of Losing is Necessary
Kids are smart. I feel like this is a given, but I wanted to draw attention to this before I make my next point. If you design a game for your class, and you’re so excited to see them play it, only halfway through the game time you realize they might not beat it within the time limit, or you create a team game and notice that one team seems bummed about not winning it can be so, so tempting to just give a few minutes of extra time or give the prize to the losing team as a reward for trying so hard.
I would encourage you not to do this. As I said before, kids are smart. They will figure it out if you remove the risk of loss in the game, and any of that great, healthy competitive tension will evaporate. The possibility of losing is a critical part of game design and competition: you have to be allowed to fail or there is no challenge.
Additionally, I think the incidental lesson you’re teaching your students by refusing to let them fail or lose is that failing and losing is bad. You’re encouraging them to avoid disappointment, instead of overcoming it. Disappointment stinks, but it’s not for forever. In fact, in my opinion, the more times you experience the disappointment of loss, the quicker, in general, you bounce back from it going forward. The more you play, the more you stand to win and lose. I want my students to feel confident and comfortable playing. I don’t want them to be afraid of losing.
My advice: set rules you plan to stick with, let students win or lose, remind them there will always be another game that might not work out the way this one did, and move on to the next one.
The Grace of Winning and Losing
I know we’ve already talked a bit about winning and losing, but there’s one more piece of the win/loss dichotomy that I want to flesh out: how to behave when winning and losing. This, at least to me, seems to be part of the hesitation that sometimes accompanies playing a game in class. What do you do when you have a student who struggles to handle losing? Likewise, what about a student who’s not a very gracious winner.
My philosophy on this piece of the topic again comes down to the idea that avoiding a problem won’t solve it. You are going to run into students who have a difficult time winning or losing: that will likely remain true until they get some experience with each. An essential piece of healthy competition is correctly modeling and enforcing both winning and losing with grace. That should be a direct part of the presentation, not something merely left as incidental. Prep students prior to the game on the expected behaviors of those who win and those who lose and hold them accountable to those behaviors. Allow the winners to celebrate their victory and the losers to process their defeat, but always remind students that this moment is temporary and will pass. No one is always a winner or always loser: you’ll experience your fair share of both throughout life. It’s more important to understand how you’ll process those highs and lows then to get bogged down in the moment.
Celebrating Effort & Achievement Are Not Mutually Exclusive
What do I mean by this? Well, not to politicize things, I grew up in the generation commonly derided as “everyone getting a trophy.” Now, I have a lot of thoughts on this (not the least of which being that we weren’t the ones giving out the trophies; how could we, we were children), but I bring this up to emphasize that celebrating effort and celebrating achievement are not mutually exclusive. You can- and should- do both. It’s a nicer world that way, simple as that.
People like to be acknowledged for hard work: feeling unappreciated isn’t a badge of honor. This can be accomplished as simply as congratulating everyone for participating or having a simple participation-level prize. Just expressing appreciation and pride for the effort demonstrated by all participants goes a long way: it gives value to trying, even if you don’t end up the winner that time.
The one caveat is you want to make sure not to diminish the winner’s victory. Not to be too reductive, but I feel like that’s some of the problem people have with “everyone getting a trophy.” I feel that phrase is shorthand for, among other things, the results not mattering. My answer, I suppose, is that not everyone has to get the same size trophy, or, to pull away from the comparison a bit, the same type of reward. Everyone who chooses to participate in a game can earn a participation sticker, but maybe the winner gets to pick the class soundtrack the next day. You can still express gratitude for people wanting to play while also rewarding the winner. And, as mentioned before, kids are smart. They’re going to want to aim for the top prize, and we should be encouraging them to aim for the top.
As long as we remember all of the distinctions that separate healthy competition from more intense forms of competitiveness, the benefits of creating a healthily competitive environment in your classroom can help all your students, win or lose.
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