Come and Gone

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post! I've had some other things going on and sadly this blog has fallen to the wayside. I'll try to be better about posting what we're doing for the next few months of school.

I opened the club to my current 5th grade class and had a great bunch of students step forward and want to join. Three of them had already been in the club before but I had five new students sign up. Even though it was only a group of eight, I found that having such a small group actually allowed me to teach them more and assure that their games were going smoothly.

We met for only five days, but in that time we learned about the Allied push out of the Normandy beachhead and we played the four battles that make up the first part of the Normandy Campaign found in the Campaign Book Volume 1. The students loved it and they seemed to have fun playing. We finished the group on Thursday, February 25th.

Welcome, 2010!

The new year is here, and we're close to half way through the 2009-2010 school year. Students are back at school and are starting to adjust to using their brains again after a two week hiatus. I'm getting used to being on my feet all day and teaching a class of 31 kids.

Even though we've only been back in school for three days, students are already asking me when our next Memoir '44 History Club session is going to start. I'm going to have to sit down and figure out a schedule because I have several groups of students who want to participate, and they're all at different levels of familiarity with Memoir '44 and World War II.

I have three groups of students to accommodate. The first group is comprised of the students who were part of the Memoir '44 History Club last year. These students are in 5th grade now and many of them already had 10 sessions where we focused on the Pacific Theater.

The second group is made up of my students from last year who are in 4th grade now. Three of these students joined the 5th graders (and held their own) but there are many students in this group who couldn't join the Memoir club before Christmas because they played Fall sports.

The last group of students who have expressed an interest in the club are my current 5th graders. I don't know how many students from my current class would actually sign up for the club, but several of them have asked when they can join.

If I wanted to, I could try combining students from all three groups into one club for a few sessions, but I'm afraid their knowledge base it just too different. Students who where in the club last year are extremely familiar with the rules of Memoir '44 and have a solid understanding of D-Day and World War II in general. The current 4th graders know the rules of Memoir '44 but don't know very much about World War II, and my current class has been introduced to Memoir '44 but would need to practice the rules for several battles because they've had so little exposure to the game so far.

I'll have to think about this dilemma and see what I can come up with. Anyone have a suggestion?

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas! It's been a good year for Memoir '44 and a great year for the Memoir '44 History Club.

It's hard to imagine that a year ago I hadn't had any History Club classes yet and the club was just theory. Since then we've learned about D-Day and the Island hopping of the Pacific Theater. We've practiced strategies, worked on the rules, learned how to play Overlord, and enjoyed this great game. It's been good for all of us.

Looking at the rest of the school year, I anticipate running two or three other sessions of the club for different groups of students. Members of my current 5th grade class have expressed interest in joining the Memoir '44 Club so I may look into providing a short session for them. Students from last year are eager to sign up, so I'll determine if there's enough interest to run a full session for the 4th grade students I taught last year (as 3rd graders). Last but not least, I want to provide another session for my original crew of students who are now in 5th grade. This will be their last time to be part of the Memoir '44 History Club and I want to make sure we get some great battles in before they graduate from Jewell Elementary.

It looks to be a busy spring with a lot of Memoir '44. I wouldn't have it any other way. Merry Christmas!