Breakthrough's Price is Right

[WooWho]

Thought I'd share this with the diehard PIR fans out there...

This summer I taught for Breakthrough Collaborative in New Orleans, a program designed to help underprivileged middle school students.  One of the things I did was a game show "short course", which are 3-week mini-classes that the students can take (think back to your high school electives).  Family Feud was the perennial favorite game, while we also played Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Card Sharks, Pyramid, Press Your Luck, and Deal or No Deal to moderate success.

Today was the last day of my short course, so I decided to go all-out and do The Price is Right.  Granted, these games were all just for fun--there weren't really any prizes involved, I designed the course for the kids to get some good-natured competition in the course of the day--but these kids were really into the game!  I had to shorten it to 2-game halves due to time constraints, but overall the show went very, very well, and in a rare twist of fate I actually finished the show on time!

Pictures (hopefully) to come--I know there were some--but first, the show itself.  I grafted the HYO section and, ahem, borrowed some prizes/copy/graphics from a few of the more recent games, but the kids really enjoyed it.

The lineup:
Punch-a-Bunch: Stage player won only 1 punch, but won $300 ($50 SC + $250).
Dice Game: WON, in a very impressive way!  The player rolled three of the four numbers exactly right, and had a rather easy call on a roll of a 5.
SCSD 1: The PAB player advanced.
Flip Flop: LOST.  If only the player decided to flop as well...
Money Game: WIPEOUT.  No numbers found at all.
SCSD 2: One of the players nearly had a dollar, but the wheel went one millimeter too far... (Flip Flop player advanced.)
Showcases: A painful DOB.  The PAB player was over by less than $700.

Despite all this, it was a very good show--in recent days I've had trouble getting the kids to stay focused on the game, but they were all over it today.  Now some of the teachers want me to do it again for the staff, during the evaluation week...well, we'll see.

[voguevixen]

Congratulations!  Sounds like you put a lot of work into it - but I bet it was enjoyable hard work.   

[Ketsuban]

Greco strikes again.

But still a good show.

[WooWho]

Congratulations!  Sounds like you put a lot of work into it - but I bet it was enjoyable hard work.   

Very.  I set up a slideshow that gave the kids visuals on what they were playing for, added in a few animations and created a pseudo-soundboard for each game, and it all worked out.  Never had to touch that perfect bid button, though.  I was a little concerned about how well the show would run with the kids, considering my attempts at Pyramid and (surprisingly) Deal or No Deal all flopped.  But with my (fake) skinny "microphone" in tow and the PIR theme blasting over the classroom speaker, it all came off really well--as host, I never felt like I had to go into hurry-up offense mode at all during the games.

What was funny, though, was during the Showcase Showdowns--I used this program: http://www.mazeguy.net/playbigwheel.html for the Big Wheel, and the kids just went up to the projection screen and pulled down on the "wheel" to spin it.

[WooWho]

Sorry for the bump (hey, it's still within 30 days), but I just posted some pictures from BTPIR on my blog.  Feel free to check 'em out.

[voguevixen]

Hmmm.  The link doesn't work for me?

[WooWho]

D'oh, I knew something was up.

Try this.