@Ashley Gunson Oh My ! This is a great idea! Special Event cards that are hiding in a pack of loot cards would be hilarious ! Thank you for sharing !

Here is a little thing that I love. A booster card maker. Here is the link for the STL I bought on Etsy. It's pretty simple to use. I did it quickly today to take pictures. I use them for prizes (they win a booster pack if they win (1st, 2nd and 3rd position get something). I can also hide them somewhere or even leave them for a substitue teacher and say ''give that to the group that work the best''. The kids loves the mystery and are really excited to open those. I put anywhere from 3 to 10 cards, depending if it's for a group or one person. I also had a spinwheel with number linked to booster.

I tell my student that they don't have to participate if they don't want to. I still convert XP to grade, they still get the normal exam. If they don't want the cards or the rewards, it's all good. I never had anyone refusing completly, but I can see a very wide range of engagement. Like Scott, my classes are mostly the same group, but there is also the fact that my theme is Sci-fi. It might help.

I would say that even in my class that are not gamified, I still calculate everything as "XP". The final ''work grade'' is always add on of the different work. I give let's say 3 mandatory work, and 2 optionnals things they can do. I dont includes exams as I experimented and it may skew the result. One year i had most of my assignements were 150-200 xp, quiz were 300xp and exam were 500 xp. The quiz were the work, as the maximum grade was small (10-15). It created a big disparity with someone who got 150XP and the other 225xp for the same small 10 pts quiz. The XP value of something is not so easy to decide as I would have though ! I just love the idea that student are working the grade they want. I give them ''bonus'' work that they can do to show me they understand better the subject for extra %. They work harder, get a better grade in the exam and in the work section. Why not !

@Jody Looy It was more work on the first 2 years. Mostly to have an idea of a what bonus work I could do, how to make it easier on me.. Then, you kind of need an idea of how much the max points can be. I generally add the 3 madatory work together to create the denominator. Then, I just add all ''XP'' together and divide by the madatory work. If we go back to my dummy XP calculator, I added a tab to give you an idea. In red, I give 3 mandatory assignement. In green, they are the bonus ones. The grade 1 line is simply the sum of all the work done / 400 (150+100+150 mandatory). You just have to chose the % increase you want. If the sum of the mandatory is 400, than 40 XP max for a bonus work will give a 10% increase on the grade. having a 60 XP means 15% increase max on their assignement grade. They could technically have 415/400, but that's just 100%. In my student online thing (powerschool/Edsembli,... ), student see only 2 things : Work and Exam. They don't see individual grade for each assignement they do. Another way to do it and I think that similar to what Scott was doing when I first saw his conference is to have a target XP for the kids, but they could choose which work they want to do. An exemple of this could be : They need to do 3 assignements work each 200XP and choose freely from a group of assignements to target 1000XP. For my electricity unit, it could be something like : M - Repair the telescope (lab) - 200XP M - Upgrade the sensor (worksheet) - 200 XP M - Choosing your best energy source - 200 XP And choose to get at least 400 XP in the list : C - Random circuit generator (lab) - 100 XP (can be done twice) C - Design the electrical circuit of your outpost (blueprints) - 200 XP C - Fix all the problems on the spaceship (worksheet) - 200 XP C - Don't get bored in space (crossword) - 50 XP C - Don't forget anything (journal) - 100 XP

@Margaret Bjornson After years of trying, I still sometime struggle to make schoolwork fit into the narrative of my story. When I can't make it fit organically, I tend to just add the blurb of text on top and the rest is mosly just work, but at the end there is always a question about what they want to do next. - You see a valley with a strange construction near a lake. On the top of the mountain, you see some kind of telescope. Where do you want to go ? - While walking trought the ruined city, you hear a whisper calling in your direction . ''Help, Help, they capture my friend''. Are you willing to help or do you want to continue your path ? I have kind of a map in the back to help them see where they are. On the picture, you can see their Spaceship name and health (before they are exploring planet, their life is shared through the spaceship. When they get questions wrong, it damages the whole ship. They can repair it with ressources). They have a choice between two stations, one is scientific and one is more military (my shop is split between the two, they can only buy stuff from their own station, not the other, it creates players interaction). 2nd main event is the strange space station in the middle, that seems offline. 3rd :then they move on and can choose between the five planets. I also see kind of a fatigue about halfway, so for me I know it's time to introduce a new mechanic or a new mystery.

@Margaret Bjornson When I had my grade 6 science class, I had a very simple 6x6 grid that they could explore (I reused a board game called Dwar7s). The game had meeple in the shape of mage, warriors I think and I gave them simple power like +1 attack, +1 movement or attack from nearby tile. I converted their grade into actions (5 work points = 1 action). Action could be explore, move, attack, interact. Something like that. They would flip the card, read the description (a lost person, a lake to rest and regenerate, a empty house, mean orcs) and decided what they wanted to do as a team. I think it's great to be able to have more than one curriculum embedded in your game. I teach science, but I would love to have missions connected to other classes. I personnaly asked them to write an opinion text with every criteria they have in language class on if they want to use DDT to make a planet plague by mosquitoes liveable for human. The language teacher never see the work sadly, but I try my best! I'm looking at including concepts and keywords from Social for my grade 10 next year for my Science 10.

Harry Potter was a big theme back in the days. Teachers were theming their classroom with house and stuff. Then I learned that school divided in ''houses'' was something common in the UK. Settlers colonising a new planet/continent is a better way to say ''we are doing Avatar''.

@Margaret Bjornson It's funny you reference Indiana Jones ! My wife and I had a discussion about the Lego Indiana Jones vs the old relic explorer themed lego sets. She was sure they were all IJ theme, but I remember Jonny Thunder before they got the actual IJ IP to be able to use the film. They were able to do some really fun stuff before they had to be restreined by the actual IP.