The Importance of Games
What games did you play as a child? Who played those games with you? What house rules made or broke you? What games still haunt your memories?
Games are the focus and primary text of my Writing II class for first year writers at Morehead State University. On my teaching blog I have written several blog posts (most recent here) about all that games offer to the teaching of writing, but first and foremost games offer a tremendous amount of inspiration for the writer because we all have experience, from earliest memory to current age, with playing, watching, and loving/hating games. Games are a bedrock of the human social experience. We play with our family and friends and in formal settings from school to organized sports. Games can bring communities together and connect humans across the globe. During our first class meeting, my students completed 10 sentence stems and then wrote and shared and wrote and shared as we began to build our class community and explore the potential of games and play to inspire our writing.
- A game is…
- An important rule is…
- My favorite game is…
- My family’s favorite game is…
- My friends’ favorite game is…
- A game I never get to play is…
- A game I wish I never played is…
- The best game character is…
- A lesson I have learned from playing is…
- One thing I wish people knew about games is…
I wrote and talked about games for more than two hours on that day and this is the fifth time I’ve focused on the theme of games. Just imagine how much you can write as you tap into this source for the first time!
Artwork by Visually
