Introducing Classcraft’s seventh Quest of the Month! Each month at Classcraft, we’ll be choosing one awesome quest to promote. Our pick for the month of October is Lisa Rose-Jeffreys, the creator of the quest “Habits of the mind,” a social studies lesson that helps students understand and develop good habits. You can import this quest here.
If you use Classcraft, you can submit quests you’ve created to be the next Quest of the Month on our submission page. Quests are personalized, self-paced, choose-your-own-adventure lessons for students. Our goal is to spotlight the amazing educators who inspire us and share creative, teacher-made content with our global community of forward-thinking educators.
Take it away, Lisa!
What grades and subjects do you teach?
Lisa Rose-Jeffreys: I teach IGCSE History; Year 8 Humanities and English; Integrated (Maths English, Science, Humanities) project based learning in middle school.
How long have you been teaching?
Rose-Jeffreys: 17 years
Where do you teach?
Rose-Jeffreys: At the Yew Chung International School of Hong Kong.
What made you decide to use Classcraft?
Rose-Jeffreys: I read about it in the book “The game believes in you” which was recommended reading since I was interested in the pedagogy of gamification. I thought the idea as represented in the book was one that would work and so checked to see if Classcraft was available to me. It was, so, I completed some of the initial ‘how to’ webinars and then bought the teacher subscription that same day — I could see it had the potential to seriously engage the students and assist me in personalizing learning to each individual student.
What kinds of things are you passionate about?
Rose-Jeffreys: Learning new things and applying them — in any discipline. I was always inspired by the polymaths of history. Teaching the links and overlaps between subject-specific skills — this is possibly one of the most important things I do to really help students in the future. Diving — it’s like meditation in another world. And tech — all human-created technology, from the evolution of language to quantum computing is inherently interesting to me.
Why do you love the quest you created? What makes it special?
Rose-Jeffreys: I was looking for a way to engage my students with Habits Of Mind (HOM) and wanted them to be able to take ownership of the quest at the end. I would recommend it as an introduction to HOM because it ends with the students creating their own tasks to add to the quests. This allows me to check their understanding and then extend the quest using their tasks. It also means that the students differentiate based on their understanding. I can set up easier student-created tasks as the main thread and then more challenging ones as side quests. As the end of the quest line becomes completely student-created, they become more invested in it, engaged, and competitive.
What did your students think of your quest? How did they react?
Rose-Jeffreys: They were very competitive over whose tasks were chosen at the end and very eager for me to add these tasks to the quest so that they could complete them. Overall, they liked the video as an easy introduction into the habits of the mind, but wanted to create more challenging tasks for their fellow students on the remaining habits of the mind … as I had hoped they would.
What’s one of your favorite things about Classcraft?
Rose-Jeffreys: The way that students react to it. I am a gamer myself so I knew it would be intrinsically interesting to some, but I did not expect the widespread appeal it had in my classes. To have students completing extra work and, indeed, demanding I put up more quests so that they can complete and level up, was amazing!
Also, the way it facilitates low-stakes high-quality student-centered learning — they can repeat the quests they find hard, without embarrassment or issue (low-stakes) and still get the quality feedback they need to make progress while “leveling-up” to more difficult tasks that branch out from the main quest if they can. I know that is technically two things — but they are both equally valuable!
Quest of the Month