Throughout the first unit each of my classes has been slowly questing towards a Dragon’s Cave. Next week they are finally going to reach the cave and will have to battle the dragon! (The game logic involves the Dragon protecting some valuable primary sources that the students need to collect so that the can unleash the secret power of the document which will send them back to their own universe.)

This Dragon Attack will be the Common Assessment (test) for Unit 1 and is based on all of the different Boss Assessment ideas I worked through last year (How to Make a Boss Fight Assessment, Hold My Beer – Messin’ with Testin’). Here is the basic outline of the Dragon Fight.

Attacking the Dragon

  • Students will answer questions using their plicker cards
  1. If an answer is correct they can roll their dice to attack the dragon.
  2. If incorrect they will choose “miss” in the drop down menu.
  • Dragon starts with HP equal to 15X each players maximum dice roll attack

Dragon Attacks

  1. Tail Whip – If more than 50% of the class misses any single question then the Dragon will randomly select one student to attack using a dice roll. That student will lose 1 heart.
  1. Breath of Fire Attack – When the total class misses is a multiple of 20 then the Dragon will fly above the class and attack multiple students. 
    1. During this attack the Dragon will roll the “Arrow” dice. The number rolled on this die will equal the number of students that lose a heart. 
    2. The students that the arrow is closest to pointing at will be the students that are attacked.

Defense against Breath of Fire Attack

  • As students answer questions correctly they will cut the question out of their physical copies. These will be turned into cannonballs against the Breath of Fire Attack
    • missed questions are also cut out and glued/taped to the test credit recovery form.
  • When the Dragon begins this attack the students will throw their cannonballs at the Dragon. If any student is able to “hit” the Dragon (meaning the cannon ball stays in the basket” then the Breath of Fire attack is a miss.

KO’s and Revivals

  • Each student starts with 3 hearts
  • If a student loses all of their hearts they are KO’d (not out of the game)
    • KO’d students still answer questions
    • If a KO’d student answers a question correctly they can throw the correct answer cannonball at the Dragon. If the ball touches any part of the Dragon they earn 1 heart back. If the cannonball stays in the Basket then they earn all Three Hearts back. 
  • A KO’d student not attack the Dragon or attempt to block a Breath of Fire Attack

Allies and Villains

  • If students created an ally of villain using the Hero Builder project each member of the group can use the ally or villain 1 time.
  • Allies – 
    • Will answer a question for the student
  • Villains – 
    • Can be sacrificed to avoid the loss of a heart.

Couple of Quick Notes

  1. I have created a Dragon that will hang from the ceiling. It is made of a basket dangling from some string. When the miss meter hits a multiple of 20 I will swing the dragon and the students will attack with their cannon balls.
  2. I am always nervous when setting the strength of the boss. For my weaker enemy battles I have been setting the power at about 20% of the number of questions. So for a 10 question question battle I would set the power at 2X each students max attack. If I have 10 students each with a 6 max attack that would set the power at 120HP for the boss. Most classes are defeating the enemies within 5-6 questions. I want the boss to come down to the wire so I have set it at 15 with 45 questions or about 33%.
  3. This is a test and I am using Plickers to collect all of the student data. They will later enter this into the district system.
  4. I am still using the testing levels concept rather than just a grade based on a raw percentage.

Oh… here is the dragon basket