Check out the link above to the Freerice website. Freerice is a website where the users play a variety of educational multiple-choice games and help to fight world hunger while doing so. For each question that you answer correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated. The categories include English vocabulary, multiplication tables, chemical symbols, English grammar, geography, art and literature.
As you answer questions, your total score is displayed as a mound of rice and the amount.
I think that one of the best parts of the game is that it is self-levelling so everyone has an even playing field. If you get a series of questions right, you will move up a level, get them wrong and move down a level. It doesn’t change the scores you can get, or the amount of rice that is donated according to your score. It just provides you with questions at a level that suits you and as your knowledge improves, up the levels go.
This would be a good game to play in class – whether Maths, English, Science or SOSE. Divide the class into groups and have a challenge to see who can donate the most rice – maybe have a small prize for the winning team as an extra incentive? I have run this in the Library for classes and challenged them to beat my score. Once they realised that the levels adjusted to suit them – it was ON! And yes – by the end of 20 mins, I was soundly beaten – it was brilliant to watch.
Check out the FAQ on the Freerice website to get an idea of how much is donated each year/day and where it all goes.
The game does come with a warning on the website that people should read and is something to be aware of. It says........
WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, and your grades.
Of course the question may arise as to how true this is – does rice REALLY get donated to people who need it just by playing a game on the web?
Check out the following link. Snopes is a type of ‘mythbuster’ for the Internet and ferrets out the truth from the fiction in all the ‘stuff’ that is out there. This could be a good site to introduce to the students so that they can check and evaluate websites and information.
Have a play with these sites and see what you think.
Great Blog - I agree FreeRice is terrific... I like that I can be very competitive with myself! Give this game a go and see what level you can get to.
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