Reading for Information: Amusement Parks & Board Games

The 2nd quarter project for Basic Skills involves a reincarnation of my amusement park unit. Instead of a PowerPoint project, the students have to create a game board based on the amusement park they've chosen and researched. You can find the worksheets here, and some of them are fillable and savable in Adobe Reader.

The groups also have to create an amusement park in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. We have several licenses of the software installed on laptops we received 2 years ago from Best Buy's Te@ch grant program. A note: If you own the original copy of RCT 3, you cannot purchase the expansion packs for the water parks or zoo. The expansion packs do not install properly. We had to purchase RCT 3: Gold, and RCT 3: Platinum. The Gold & Platinum versions install and run well.

At the wiki link above, you can find tutorial worksheets for RCT 3. I did not make the worksheets fillable, because it would be too hard to fill them out on the laptop while engaging in the software. The tutorials for RCT 3 require significant reading ability, which is something that most of my students have this year, but if your students do not have a 4-6th grade reading ability, you would be better off doing the tutorials as a group. You can do this by hooking a laptop to a TV with an S-Video output, an interactive whiteboard (if you're lucky enough to have one!), or an LCD Projector to a screen. I plan to give the game a shot on our interactive whiteboard, just because it seems like a really cool way to play.

The worksheets also include a rubric for the amusement parks, and the game boards. I allowed the students to choose the kind of game; many chose a Monopoly-style game, although 2 groups chose PowerPoint games: Jeopardy and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The last thing that is now available is a PowerPoint webquest for students to complete. The new version has added questions, and a box at the bottom of the page to put the link where they find the picture or text. It also has a project reflection sheet included. My students will likely be using this for their mid-term exams if I can get laptops.