Lesson Idea: Historical Jeopardy

Considering I haven't done a lesson idea in quite some time, I've decided to create one that can include all historical subjects: Historical Jeopardy! Everyone loves Jeopardy, right? Even the SNL ones taught kids something (like how NOT to pronounce appetite in French); this translates over incredibly well to the subject of history. Even without the suaveness that is Alex Trebek, any history teacher can use this outline to help teach about a period in history; all you need is a computer and some technical wizardry and you'll be well on your way!

First of all, you need a computer to do this lesson. The program for the Jeopardy game will be done within the Microsoft PowerPoint application; you can try doing this project by hand, but it will take much longer and, honestly, isn't very viable to use nowadays (the Internet Age is upon us). I'm going to try as well as I can to help you with creating the PowerPoint. If you follow the steps, you'll be fine!

Instructions

1. Create a title for your game of Jeopardy. For an example, we'll use "The Industrial Revolution Jeopardy!" If you want, you can add backgrounds and transitions to your choosing.
2. Make a new slide; on this slide, you'll make a 5X5 grid (5 topics involving the Industrial Revolution and 5 amounts of points per option). You can choose whatever topics in this era as you want, but I recommend for the points that you go from 200 to 1000. Put a standalone box off to the side and label it "Final Jeopardy!".
3. Here's the tricky part. You'll have to make 26 new slides, one for each box and Final Jeopardy. But how do you connect them back to the original grid? Here are the instructions according to Microsoft:

• In Normal view, select the text or the object that you want to use as a hyperlink.
• On the Insert tab, in the Links group, click Hyperlink.
• Under Link to, click Place in This Document.
• Do one of the following: Link to a custom show in the current presentation:
• Under Select a place in this document, click the custom show that you want to use as the hyperlink destination.
• Select the Show and return check box.
• Link to a slide in the current presentation:
  • Under Select a place in this document, click the slide that you want to use as the hyperlink destination.

(If you're having a hard time understanding these instructions, go to the actual website here)

1. Once you've linked all of your slides, it's time to choose the questions.  How hard should they be? Well, ones under, say, 200 points should be about this difficult: This person copied the English textile system and brought it to America, with the answer "Who was Francis Lowell?" As you move up in points, you should move up in difficulty of the question, with Final Jeopardy being the hardest of them all.
2. Now, you just need to follow the rules of Jeopardy: whoever answers correctly chooses the next category, whoever answers incorrectly loses the number of points the question is worth, and Final Jeopardy determines the winner. Have your students divide into three teams and have fun!

That's basically it! I hope you enjoy your new way to help the kids study-who can forget anything that includes those soothing notes that make up the Jeopardy song?

-Pharaoh Noh-Tyep