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Curricular

Integration For MAt

Before getting into the meat of this document, it behooves us to mention that Minds Across Time is not a closed community. By trusting us and our work with your students or children, you have made a significant gesture that we want to honor by helping to create the best possible product for our clients. To this end, we offer blank cards that you can use to incorporate your own curriculum or lessons into Minds Across Time. We offer a custom-card printing service so you can use your own cards in your own classroom. And if you are up for it, we will gladly work with you to design a completely new expansion set that will fit your specific curricular desires. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to contact the developers at MindsAcrossTime.com


Overview:

If you haven’t noticed, Minds Across Time is fun. And kids need that. Our first priority is the welfare of our clients, and that includes granting them an experience which sparks their imagination, trains them in persistence, and helps them to build relationships with other people. But it just so happens that we can do this while enriching their classroom experience, deepening vital understandings, and reinforcing core content every time they sit down to play the game.

To that end, here are some general ways Minds Across Time can be used:

The first way to use Minds Across Time is as a game, played during students’ free time. Collectible trading card games are something that students already enjoy and are engaged in. Why not capitalize on that to meet core standards? Just by playing Minds Across Time as a game, students are meeting:

  • KY.6-8.2.3 Students identify and analyze systems and the ways their components work together or affect each other.
  • KY.6-8.5.2 Students use creative thinking skills to develop or invent novel, constructive ideas or products.
  • KY.6-8.5.4 Students use a decision-making process to make informed decisions among options.
  • KY.6-8.5.5 Students use problem-solving processes to develop solutions to relatively complex problems.
  • KY.6-8.6.1 Students connect knowledge and experiences from different subject areas.
  • KY.6-8.6.3 Students expand their understanding of existing knowledge by making connections with new knowledge, skills and experiences.


And if students utilize the resources available at MindsAcrossTime.com, such as the card explanations, histories, and the forums, they are meeting:

  • KY.6-8.1.1 Students use reference tools such as dictionaries, almanacs, encyclopedias, and computer reference programs and research tools such as interviews and surveys to find the information they need to meet specific demands, explore interests, or solve specific problems.
  • KY.6-8.1.16 Students use computers and other kinds of technology to collect, organize, and communicate information and ideas.


These standards are for middle school (grades 6-8) in the state of Kentucky, but similar standards exist in many states.

If you have the opportunity to play the game with your students, you can help them get insight into the strategic and tactical decisions in the game which build their critical thinking and decision making skills. These skills will be applicable in all subject areas.

The second way to use Minds Across Time is as an incentive system. Because individual cards (and even packs or sets) are fairly inexpensive, Minds Across Time cards are a viable reward for disciplined behavior, hard work, or even academic success. But Minds Across Time can also be used in much more targeted ways to reinforce the value of learning. For example, all Minds Across Time cards could be offered for free to students, on the condition that they must first read a book (or some selected text) on the subject of the card. To earn the Thomas Edison card, students might need to read a biography of Thomas Edison. To earn the Blockbuster card, students might need to create a plot of the amount of money earned by the best selling film of each year for 10 years versus the year it was released, and then decide if it is a linear function. Using the cards in this manner reinforces the value of knowledge and deepens the way the students experience both the card game and the real world around them.

The third way to use Minds Across Time is as an instructional mechanism. The card effects are designed to get at some of the key features and interactions of the things they represent, and many have educational content written onto the card itself. The cards can be used to introduce new content, explore the ramifications of an idea, or to reinforce or practice. For example, a discussion about synthetic materials could begin by asking students to search their Minds Across Time cards to identify where a common synthetic material (polypropylene) comes from, and to name some things it is used in. A lesson on environmental impacts could look at the pollution mechanic in Minds Across Time, investigate real life ways to measure and reduce environmental impact, and eventually propose new product cards that can be used in the game, based on their real-life research. A teacher trying to reinforce understanding of algebraic formulas could have students practice using all of the cards in Minds Across Time that require evaluating an algebraic expression. For each card, we have ensured that there are academic standards closely related to the content or function of the card, but these are merely a starting point for instructors looking to take advantage of this instructional resource; we encourage you to think of new and better ways to incorporate existing cards or new ones into your lessons.

Lookup Table of Standards Alignment:

What follows is a table of standards met by specific Minds Across Time cards, the full text of the referenced standard, and a list of cards which use that standard. These standards are given by a Common Core designation, or their state designation for the states of Kentucky and/or Ohio, but similar standards exist in many states. Please note that the second item in the KCAS codes is a range of grade levels. For the purposes of this table, codes may be written for grades 6-8 where the text of the standard does not change across grade level.