Matt Sanders and John Dano

Activity Design Plan

Activity Objective
The students will comprehend the order of critical world events by reviewing the dates on which
they happened.
Description of Activity
The students will demonstrate their knowledge of when historical events occurred by reviewing
them with an in class activity. The Dating Game was created as a fun and interactive way to
review world history, more importantly, the dates on which certain events in world history took
place. In this activity students will compete with each other as teams where one member of each
team will have to guess when a certain event took place, closest without going over, while the
rest of their team will come up with a flashy 15 second description of the event that does not
include the date of the event. This activity will recall previous learning and connect the learning
in a meaningful way.
Motivation
For extrinsic motivation, the students will be given a choice of 1 piece of fun-sized Milky Ways,
Snickers, or 3 Musketeers for each team member for each question they get correct. The intrinsic
motivation is competition between the students. Each team will have a desire to win because of
the extrinsic candy and an intrinsic innate love of competition.
Directions
1. The class will be split randomly into 5 teams of roughly equal size by counting off.
2. Each team will select an individual to go to the front of the classroom to guess on the date of
an event that is shown on the board.
3. Before the students in the front of the room are allowed to answer the teams in the back will
have 30 seconds to come up with a flashy 15 second description of the event on the board that
does not include the date of the event in the description.
4. The team that has the best description of the event will win a point.
5. After the descriptions have been said the student in the front from the team that had the best
description will have 5 seconds to guess when they thought the event happened first. Then the
student to their left will have 5 seconds to guess until all of the students have guessed. Each
student only has to say a year however, if another student would like to say the same year as a
previous student they must include the month that they believe the event happened.
6. The other members of a students team can only help their teammate in the front of the room
when they are guessing the date of an event silently.
7. The student who guesses the date that is closest to the event, without guessing a date later than
when the event occurred, will win a point for their team and then select another member of their
team to come down to the front in their stead.
8. If a member of the audience shouts out the answer then the question is dead.
9. No one is to ever shout out the answer to a question.
10. If all of the students guess a date later than when an event actually occurred none of the
teams earn any points and each student in the front of the room selects a new member of the their
team to come on down to the front in their stead.

11. No notes, books, phones, or other outside sources may be used at all during the game.
Understanding the directions will be checked by drawing Popsicle sticks and asking the students
to answer the following questions:
How do you know what team youre on?
If you are in the front of the room what do you do?
If you are in the back of the room what do you do?
Can teammates in the back of the room help teammates in the front of the room?
How long do you have to guess the date if youre in the front of the room?
How long do you have to come up with a description for the event in you are in the back of the
room?
How will we determine who has the closest date to an event? (Closest without going over)
What happens if all of the students in the front guess a date later than when the event occurred?
Summarize the directions of the game.
Active Participation
All of the students will be involved because they will be a part of a team and they will either be
in the front of the room guessing the date of an event or in the back of the room working with
their teammates to come up with the descriptions of an event and trying to silently help their
teammates in the front of the room. The students will be expected to be actively participating and
listening so they can hear the difference between good and bad summaries of historical events
and the correct dates that events took place.
On-task behavior will be maximized by the use of a timer. The timer will ensure that the students
are playing fairly as well as not wasting anybody elses time. All electronic devices will be out of
sight for the duration of this game.
Expectations of Students Behavior
Students will be respectful of their classmates by being quite when the teacher is asking
questions and the students are giving their responses. Golf claps will be accepted as a cheer for a
correct answer. Any answers that are shouted out will result in the question being dead. The
attention getting signal will be Alright, kiddos! and will be used to moderate the noise level as
well as to grab the students attention if the room is too noisy or directions need to be given.
Movement will be smooth and fluid with only students moving up to the front and down to the
back of the room with usually only two students moving at a given time, ten in the case of every
team overestimating when an event happened.
Materials/Resources Needed
Overhead Projector
The Date Is Right PowerPoint
Candy (Milky Ways, Snickers, and 3 Musketeers
Modeling
A practice round will be played after the students have been separated and put into their teams.
During the practice round each step will be labeled as they go through the process of playing the
game. Once the correct performance is shown and the criteria labeled and any steps are clarified,
the game will begin.

This game was created by Matt Sanders and John Dano who were inspired by The Dating
Game for the title and more importantly, Gods gift to game shows: The Price is Right.