The Stone Age is one of my favourite history topics. I decided to try and bring the subject to life by developing a game the children could play to immerse themselves in prehistoric times.
As the scheme of work progressed, we learnt about how life changed through to the Bronze Age and then on to the Iron Age.
I put together this classroom game for the children to play over a six week half-term. We had a couple of sessions a week that lasted around 30 minutes each. As the game went on, the children became incredibly engaged with the game. They began developing trade alliances and growing their settlements to give them better chances at survival. There were some incredibly tense hunts and explorations and the pictures of their settlements had completed changed as they had developed their farms and bell pits (bronze mines). Some groups had made their own jewellery and one group even built a stone henge!
The game is still being developed. I will try to run it again when I next teach the topic. Let me know if you get to run the game with your class and please share your thoughts on how to improve the game further.
The RPG elements of the game could be explored by getting the students to write diary entries about their experiences in-game. They could explain how their dwellings have been improved by the work they have completed over several weeks.
This game was an exploration of how gaming can help bring history to life for the class. They had lots of ideas to add to the game and many of the rules here were added thanks to the students.
RPG CLASSROOM 