The first time I tried a boss battle, it was with 20 minutes left in class, the kids had never used dice and didn't know what they were doing, and it didn't work very well. At 3:30, the clay golem they were battling had to run off into the woods after he'd dropped from 100 to 71 hit points.
Wednesday, most of the students were finished with their current project (magic clay whistles to call for the clay man to deliver more magic clay). They were given a range of websites and YouTube videos to use to explore different types of clay musical instruments. Some of them did not take this very seriously, so I decided to have a boss battle Friday to see if any of them had learned anything.
First - I had a student tell me Thursday that he was going to be absent Friday. I told him he would miss a boss battle. He decided he didn't want to miss it, and since he was going to check into school for my class, he decided to check in at noon so he would only be absent a half day. So by gamifying my classroom, I got him to attend another teacher's class that he would have missed!
I created a Kahoot! with videos and questions about clay musical instruments. You can find it if you search for "Return of the Clay Golem - Ceramic Musical Instruments" on Kahoot. Next, I laid out dice for each student to use. I also laid out cards they could purchase.
All but one of my students are at level 1. When they level up, they get 100 gold pieces and a red card (this can do things in the classroom or during a battle). There are also blue cards they can buy at any time. My student who has hit level 2 drew a red card that allows him to add 1 to any die roll three times per day. I also had a student buy a card that can be turned in to allow him to reroll any die roll.
While my third block Ceramics I students cleaned up, I laid out the items we would need. Dice, cards, and a dry erase board listing everyone's hit points.
When my students arrived, they were excited to see we were having a boss battle. I started the Kahoot, and joined it with my phone so there was only one device that could answer. I went to each group (I have three pairs of tables with a team at each) and they answered a question. If they answered correctly, the student whose turn it was rolled to see if they hit the monster. If they did, they rolled to see how much damage they did. If they answered incorrectly, the monster attacked them. I rolled to see if he hit, and if he did, I rolled for damage.
They quickly realized that if they wanted to get the monster to zero hit points before they ran out of questions, they had to help each other. They used their cards to improve dice rolls. They cheered when they did damage, and groaned when they missed.
We got to the last question of the game and the monster still had 7 hit points. The team answered the question correctly, and the student rolled high enough to hit. No one thought she would do enough damage - as a Ranger, she rolled 2 4-sided dice. She rolled a 7! Everyone cheered!
All of this took 30 minutes of a 90 minute class. The activity was successful as a formative assessment, because I could see what they knew from the previous class. It also functioned as a review. By the time we finished the Kahoot, all of the students had seen a wide variety of ceramic musical instruments from various time periods and cultures (even if we didn't go into depth there yet), and they had heard what they sound like. This was so much better than trusting them to do it on their own, or worse, holding the class captive while I showed videos and talked at them. They were engaged and discussing the topic.
I asked at the end of class what they thought about boss battles. The students were very enthusiastic, except for one student who said she had rather spend the time working with clay. I may come up with a compromise there - I'm not sure. This whole thing is still a work in progress.
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