"Reef Survivor" Board Game - High School Advanced Placement Environmental Sciences Edition (Complex)

The board game has been modified for use in high school science classrooms, specifically an advanced placement environmental science class. It has been tested with 10-12th-grade students. The game works well with class sizes of 26-40 students (a "player" is a pair of students). The content of this game is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS); it can be adapted for several Earth Science classes, including Aquatic Science, Biology, Earth and Space Science, and Environmental Systems.

Before gameplay, students should have a basic knowledge of marine communities, evolution, and environmental changes in coastal ecosystems. The game is most effective in a group of students who are excited about ocean ecosystems or board games.

This module was created with the intention of being plug-and-play. There are various learning "scaffolds" included in the module, including pre-game activities, a rulebook, a glossary, and formative assessment activities.

This module is intended to be used as a stand-alone module when teaching Unit 2: The Living World - Biodiversity, but also covers standards in Units 1, 3, 8, and 9. This module may take 2-4 classroom days to complete (2-3 class periods for 90-minute blocks or 3-4 class periods for 45-minute blocks).

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Earth Sciences

High School (Earth Systems): HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth's surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.

High School (Life Science): HS-LS2-1 Use mathematical and/or computational representations to support explanations of factors that affect carrying capacity of ecosystems at different scales.

High School (Life Science): HS-LS-2 Use mathematical representations to support and revise explanations based on evidence about factors affecting biodiversity and populations in ecosystems of different scales.

High School (Life Science): HS-LS2-3 Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

College Board Standards

• Unit 1: The Living World: Ecosystems - 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10. 1.11
• Unit 2: The Living World: Biodiversity - 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7
• Unit 3: Populations - 3.4, 3.5
• Unit 8: Aquatic and Terrestrial Pollution - 8.2, 8.5
• Unit 9: Global Change - 9.5, 9.6, 9.7,9.8, 9.9, 9.10

During gameplay, students will be challenged to use their critical thinking skills to win the game. The objective is to build a resilient reef ecosystem that can survive environmental changes. Through gameplay students will use their critical thinking skills in a cost-benefit analysis for each of their turns. As a points-based game, students are challenged to:

• Analyze informal data (points on the gameboard)
• Predict future outcomes
• Compare and observe models and strategies for ocean ecosystems
• Interpret the feedbacks caused by Earth-system interactions

This activity is competitive and so supports active student learning and engagement through competition and strategizing. It is also great for team-building (collaborative learning) as students are encouraged to investigate gameplay content in groups as well as play together as a team. In assessments, students are expected to communicate their learning in various modalities.

All game materials (Print-at-home version) are available in the Texas Data Repository. Click Here!

The High School Advanced Placement Environmental Sciences teaching materials are available here. Start here with the Lesson Plan.

Before implementing this module, please plan to prepare the game materials ahead of time. All game board materials listed below are located in the link above; it is recommended to have students help with the cutting and organizing. Once the game pieces are cut and bagged, you may group all materials in a small cardboard present box.

Game pieces are labeled by their file name and include:

• Game booklet (i.e., Rulebook)
• Printing Instructions
• An introductory movie about the game as well as some "mini-lectures" about ecology etc.
• "Cheat sheets" (e.g., token identification charts and Gameplay order of operations)
• Game boards (e.g., the Atoll, Patch reef, barrier reef etc.)
• The Coral Triangle
• Nursery
• Disaster Cards
• Organism tokens (Reef Builders, Reef Dwellers, and Reef Coverers)
• Mutation Tokens
• Notebooks and Scoreboard

Teaching materials are labeled by their file name. The Lesson Plan includes links to all teaching materials used.

The time required for set-up varies and we recommend preparing for this board game module 1-2 weeks before implementation. Please reference the teacher lesson plan and the teaching notes documents that are provided in the Texas Data Repository (specific documents linked above).

The Lesson Plan includes links to all assessments used.

High School-level game and teaching activities based on the University-level lab described in Martindale et al., 2024, "Reef Survivor": A new board game designed to teach college and university undergraduate students about reef ecology, evolution, and extinction. Journal of Geoscience Education. 72:1,37-56, https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2023.2221818 (open access)

All game materials (Print-at-home version) and teaching materials are available in the Texas Data Repository.