There was a time in my life when I looked down on board games. I had some happy memories of board games, but for the most part I remember playing Monopoly for seemingly eons and ending the game by sheer boredom. I never understood the draw to them. That is until I got married, and my sister-in-laws family introduced us to European board games. Now I am a full fledged board game geek, and my wife and I are known as the board game people. We found that there were games that were fast (usually 30 to 90 minutes), fun, and involved more strategy than, "I sure hope I get boardwalk!" They are interactive, and just really fun to play.
Enter Settlers of Catan
If you have never played Settlers (the way the hip cats say it), you should find someone who plays board games, because they have played it. You should then proceed to play multiple rounds of it with them. The game has been out for almost twenty years but, considering that, it is relatively unknown (though that is changing for sure).
The premise is that you are settlers on this new island and you are trying to farm and negotiate resources to build your settlement and be the reigning leader of the island. It involves dice rolling, building and development, and the most fun part, negotiating. It is really a teacher's dream.
The premise is that you are settlers on this new island and you are trying to farm and negotiate resources to build your settlement and be the reigning leader of the island. It involves dice rolling, building and development, and the most fun part, negotiating. It is really a teacher's dream.
Classroom Use
I first got the idea to use Catan from this excellent post. It really is a great tool to get students starting to think about trading and commerce in the context of building a society or civilization. I was excited last year that I would get a chance to teach a humanities class where I could put this to use. The game can be played with six players (if you have an expansion), and I had 24 students, so all I needed were 4 copies. I looked to get them and this happened
It doesn't take a Dan Meyer lesson to figure out that's a lot of money. I tried e-mailing the publisher, Mayfair Games, who was awesome and did send me some free games (not strictly Catan), and since I really needed Catan itself that was not going to work with my budget of precisely $0. I needed to do something about this.
Settlers of Catan: Classroom Edition
When I was in my university history class, my proff, Dr. C.S. Morrisey, set up a game of Diplomacy, where we played one turn per class. We had the chance to negotiate with a team of fellow students, and we made strategic advancements over the course of the semester. I wanted to create a version of Catan that was like this. So I did. I offer to you my adjustments for classroom Catan.
The Board
I went about creating my board in PowerPoint. It is important to know (because I researched it), that copyright wise you are allowed to use the mechanics of a game as you want. The visuals are what is copyrighted, so I had to scour for other images. If you see anything here, that you know for sure is copyrighted, please let me know, and I can change it. I tried to find creative commons, but I am unsure about absolutely everything.
Rules
The basic rules of Catan stay very much the same. I will not repeat them all here, but if you are completely unfamiliar you could look at the pdf rules.
The following revisions I have made are to make it work in the classroom. Each day the following happens:
The following revisions I have made are to make it work in the classroom. Each day the following happens:
- Development Cards are to be played before the round, in order of first team, second team, third team, etc.
- Auctions for Buildings these take place if two teams try to build in the same spot. For ease of auctioning all resources are equally valuable during this phase.
- Resource Gathering takes place by one roll of the dice per number of teams. Each country keeps track of their resources for the round, and the teacher divvies them out at the end of the round. On a roll of seven, countries must subtract one resource from what they have (or will) earn that round. If a seven is rolled and a country has not received any resources that round, they must subtract from their resource reserve.
- Building Requests are submitted by the building request form (see zip file S=Sheep, W=Wheat, L=Lumber, O=Ore, and B=Brick). If more than one country wants to be build in the same area, they must pay up front, and then settle the debate next round in the auction.
Between classes students are allowed to make deals and trades as they see fit. They get really into the bartering mode between these rounds.
Classroom Use
My goal for this was to create an anchor for our discussions of civilizations. I didn't have any grand assessment come out of this (I think I pulled a Mr. D journal entry).
It wasn't my goal to have anything large scale from this; it was a conversation starter, that I could use when we talked about civilizations. It does not mean however that I don't want it to grow this year. I can see this being useful in more than just a humanities context.
I see this as useful in at least the following contexts.
I see this as useful in at least the following contexts.
- As stated above history and humanities: What are the resources that we see in X? How did those resources affect their culture? What happens when one country becomes too powerful? What happened in our game? What are the benefits and advantages of trading? (Send me more in the comments)
- Math: STATS?! This is one of the best games for figuring out the probabilities of dice (in the actual board game they are clearly labeled). You may want ore more than wheat, BUT the ore is placed on a 12, but the wheat is on an 8! I can see keeping logs of the rolls as the game is played, to figure out what is producing the most to show experimental probability, and then discuss the theoretic probability of the game. Take a break from the game to roll HUNDREDS OF DICE, and let them know that it is your team's research and development.
The Goods
| catan_complete.zip |
