HerStory

This week’s title has us excited to use it in the classroom: HerStory designed by Nick Bentley, Emerson Matsuuchi, and Danielle Reynolds, published by @underdog.games. HerStory has been on our radar for a while and back in April we were lucky enough to attend a panel starring Matsucchi at the #LITableTopGameExpo in which he dished about designing this and some of his other titles that supercharged our enthusiasm.

This game seems tailored for use in English and social studies courses. The game features simple open drafting and set collection mechanisms that make it easy to pick up. Where this game shines is the Chapter Cards - each spotlighting a remarkable woman from history. Every Chapter Card has a stunning portrait of a famous woman, and on the card’s reverse is a brief biography and “did you know?” fact about her. The information is concise and digestible, and could serve as a model for students in grades 6-8. It would be a neat assignment to have students research women not featured in the game and generate their biographies. At the higher levels, educators might make use of the game’s research tokens. These tokens feature symbols that represent reading, thinking, interviewing, and searching. With a little creativity these could be transformed into criteria for a deeper research project. Perhaps students write a deep dive on figures from the game or research a new candidate to recommend by citing what experts have written about her (reading), evaluating her contributions to history (thinking), quoting interviews from or about her (interviewing), and researching her influence (searching).

One potential drawback is that there is little just-in-time learning - students are not necessarily learning to research while playing this game. However, we are confident that a teacher could (and should) use this game as a tool for engagement and viable research projects.