Cold Spring shop owner guides students
Students at Peekskill High School’s Summit Academy recently completed a unit on making board games as a method to learn the content of their Global Studies curriculum. To make the games, their teacher, Anita Prentice, enlisted the assistance of Ian Groombridge, owner of Groombridge Games in Cold Spring.
Ian Groombridge assists students at Peekskill High School’s Success Academy as they analyze board games (photo provided)
“My students are very immersed in video games, and I was curious as to whether the process of developing a game based on some aspect of the Global Studies curriculum would help them do well on the Global Regents exam,” said Prentice, who lives in Garrison.
Groombridge visited the classroom several times over the course of a month, helping students play and analyze games such as Diplomacy, Risk, Monopoly and Sorry. The students then began the process of creating their own games.
“Some students worked on their own, while one larger group wanted to work together,” Groombridge said. “They developed a game based on Risk, but set in the Middle Ages, that turned out to be very interesting to play.” Making games, he said, was much more difficult than the students expected.
Anita Prentice with Ian Groombridge (photo provided)
Prentice said her students enjoyed the process so much they expressed frustration at having to end the games at the end of each class period.
Groombridge’s visits were made possible by a Pace University Teacher Inquiry project at Peekskill High School. Summit Academy is an alternative education program for Peekskill High School students.
