The Object of the Game

I have been using a phrase that my students do not understand. I begin each class by reading the learning target for the day. Sometimes instead of saying “learning target,” I will say “The object of the game is…..”

This baffles my students and today I figured out why. 

They didn’t play board games. 

When I was young, back in the Cretaceous period, we didn’t have all the entertainment options that our students have today. 

We didn’t have video games, computers, cell phones, or 250 channel HD TV’s. We didn’t have Redbox, DVRs. or iTunes.

In fact, the only electronics in the house was the Radar Range, the TV and Dad’s Hi-Fi (Which we were not allowed to touch…ever).

What we did have was four or five channels of black and white TV. 

We had playing outside. 

We had board games. 

And that’s where my disconnect originates. Each board game had a set of instructions

printed on the inside of the box top, or on a folded up, flimsy paper. Among the first sentences of the instructions:

“The Object of the Game.”

Since this generation don’t play board games - read that bored games - they have no idea what I’m talking about when I use that phrase to begin my class. 

Not that I’m going to stop saying it, but now I know why they look at me funny when I say those words aloud.