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The challenge of Connections is to play all the cards (in a standard deck of playing cards) using the legal moves of the game (see the moves listed in the picture to the right - I wrote them on a white board). This one plays well with 8 to 16 players (you could have more, but then it adds a bit more "waiting for your turn"). So far I've only played this one a couple times. First at a conference with high school and adult participants - they were a captive audience helping me work out some of the complexities of the game. The other, a middle school group (in the video) of 6th, 7th & 8th graders.
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The Video Initially I was going to cut my footage down enough to simply understand the game. As I was editing it occurred to me that keeping all the footage would allow for more analysis of the way I worked with these middle schoolers. So, if you want to watch enough to get the idea, you only need to stay in through my introduction. Otherwise, catch as much of the 17 minutes as you can - lots of interesting interactions (you might need to turn up the volume to pick up some go the voices).
NOTE: The only part I cut out was dealing the cards. To save time, I dealt out three cards to each person, then single cards around (to the right of me) to finish up the deck.
LIGHTNING 156 As this activity unfolded for me, my first mental model was for groups to play all the cards in 156 seconds (this is what I tried with my conference captive audience). I found this task to be pretty challenging - out of six groups trying it, one got within four cards after 156 seconds. Possible? I believe so. Now I'm thinking, Connections will be a good way to lead into Lightning 156. Once a group has time to practice the game and work out some of the cooperative behaviors they will need, they should be able to beat the Lightning clock. (I'll be working towards getting some video of this level in the future.)
Keep me posted my friend.
Chris Cavert, Ed.D.
Chris Cavert, Ed.D.
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