EVERYONE LOVES CHOCOLATE, RIGHT? Some of you are aware I’ve taught college composition as well as high school English and creative writing. This activity works great with any piece of literature where class struggle drives the plot. I’m sharing it here because The Chocolate Game can also be used in various workplace settings to address workers’ underlying thoughts on inequality.
Much of the literature taught in language arts classrooms deals with class and race relations. I like to begin George Orwell’s Animal Farm by engaging students in a metaphorical activity called The Chocolate Game. The goal of the game is to demonstrate just how unfair life is, especially in today’s Occupy Wall Street world of the one percent versus the 99 percent.
For shorter class periods, make sure the students do the quick write at the end of the prior class and leave time to preface what they should expect for the next class. The actual playing time tends to take 45 minutes, but more sedate classes might finish in 30 minutes. Students should walk into class with their usual seats pushed to the outer walls in order to provide a gaming area.
Before playing the game, do a quick write on the following prompt:
- Is life fair? Do all people play by the same rules? Explain. At your discretion, you could also add the following questions to the prompt: How is power used to oppress others? How does socioeconomic status affect a person’s ability to succeed?
While students are writing, the teacher should place 30 evenly spaced pennies down the center of the floor. When the class is nearly finished writing, stagger three pieces of chocolate toward the end of the line of pennies, such as a bite-sized Halloween-sized bar, a standard Hershey’s bar, and a massive piece like a Symphony bar should go at the very end.
Don’t discuss the prompt. Announce the groups for the game. A minimum of three groups is needed, but the game gets more interesting with 5-7 groups in play. My classes already sit in pre-assigned heterogenous groups, but you can divide the students into groups as you see fit. Arbitrary groupings like hair, eye, clothing, or shoes would be great for this game. Once groups are established, have each group provide a small token, such as a pen or keychain.
Hold onto their tokens and state that this is a metaphorical game for life. In order to keep students from smothering the playing area (things can get pretty heated in classes with lots of competitive students), I require each team to have a captain who will roll the dice and also speak for the team. The rest of the group should remain off to the sides of the playing area.
At this point the students assume even starting points, so I explain that the first team that reaches the first piece of chocolate gets two minutes to make a rule regarding how the game is played. However, they can’t simply state “We win!” It must be a rule of strategy with careful consideration for wording. I also emphasize that I set the game in motion, but after that, they are not to look to me to keep track of turns, etc. It’s best not to tell students to note others’ body language and comments as that tends to inhibit some of them a bit more than they would be otherwise. That will become part of class discussion after the game.
The teacher immediately interjects unfairness by staggering the tokens at the beginning. Mentally note any comments they make for discussion after the game. Some will catch on fairly quickly, others will get carried away by the desire to win at all costs. If you have favorite students, this is the time to place their token at the front of the line. Again, arbitrary choices are great. Maybe a student gave you a purple token and you like purple, so for no other reason you put their team at the front of the starting line. Then throw the dice in the direction of the team that will go first. Tell them they get to decide who goes next. Once the pattern is set, they need to follow it until the game is over.
Early on, when a team rolls or a one or a two they will make some sort of disappointing noise. That is when you should pick up the die and say something like, “I think you can do better than that!” and give it back to them for another turn. That really gets them going. Do this once or twice more, but be arbitrary. It should not happen for every low roll.
The first team that makes it to the first chocolate piece will generally win the game, but not always. There may be a mathematical way to place the chocolate to really complicate things, but I’ll leave that to those with a more logical mind than mine. Students will come up with all sorts of rules, many of them complicated and totally unfair. Note how some students will slink back from the action once they feel all hope is lost. Others will become insult-hurlers of the first degree. Some will resort to blatant cheating, and other students may or may not call them on it. Normal classroom rules should still apply for language and behavior.
As the teams win chocolate, pay attention to how they divide it. Typically they split it equally between their group members, rarely do they think to ask their teacher if they would like a piece. Rarer still is the group who will split their chocolate with the entire class.
Finally, engage them in a full class discussion:
- What rules governed the game?
- What specific comments and/or actions by others during the game did you notice?
- How is this game a metaphor for life? (Really draw this one out.)
- What problems would arise in trying to create a Utopian (perfect) society?
If needed, use the next writing prompt to further the exploration of Utopia.
- Utopia refers to an ideally perfect place. Describe what your perfect world would be like. Then provide support for why such a place is impossible. Be specific.
Is this something you would try with a group of people to teach them about social inequality?
Permission to use the images in this post must be granted by JeriWB.
What an excellent idea. I have a social justice unit coming up with my grade 7s. It will be total chaos, but I think they’ll learn what I want them to. Thanks for sharing.
Candace, as us brave teachers know who are willing to unleash a little chaos in the classroom every now and again, it can be the best and most memorable of teachers.
I tried this today with my 9th graders as an into to Animal Farm. It worked great! We had so much fun. I love ideas that get the students up and moving!
Thanks for this:)
That’s great to hear and thanks so much for letting me know!
Excellent Idea – I’m going to play this next week with my kids – but can you explain to me how the staggered bite-sized chocolates function in the greater scheme of the game? Do they get eaten when a team lands on them or saved up till the end? Thanks!
Jessie, aside from the initial rules I set at the beginning, I leave it entirely up to students to decide what to do with the chocolate. Some teams will gobble it down in front of the rest of the class without a second thought, others will share the largest candy bar with the rest of the class, and only twice have I been offered a piece! The way the teams go about sharing the chocolate makes for great discussion at the end.
Saving this to my Faves.
Abundantly good on so many levels.
You must be a KICK Ass teacher, Jeri. xx
Ps. we will do this w/ elementary students.
Kim, if you do play this with elementary kids, please be sure to let me know how it goes. I have only played it with ninth and tenth graders. Competition always got pretty heated with that age group, so I would be interested to know how younger kids react.
Wow! What an interesting way to enter into a discussion of social injustice. There is nothing more powerful than showing rather than telling! And I do love the idea of throwing in a description of Utopia. I’m interested in knowing how varied those descriptions were Jeri!
Jacquie, it really is a great game for showing how inequality plays out. I would always take the most popular students’ game token and put them at the biggest disadvantage regarding their starting point. They always hated that, but it would also dawn on them right way the point the game would start to make.
Yes, I would use this game if I was a teacher. When I was in high school, there was a Social Studies teacher who had us play a game about trying to get out of the ghetto. Although the game itself was different, the idea behind it was very similar to this game. Bottom line: Our society is controlled by money.
Glynis, the ghetto game sounds intriguing. I also always wanted to do the activity where a teacher introduces bias by telling students those with brown eyes are more intelligent, etc and therefore should get more privileges. I never did get to try that one, but maybe someday.
Hi Jeri,
That is an excellent way of acquainting the students with life, people and relationships! It all depends on the imagination of the teacher to adapt this game and expose the students to the values of life in a subtle manner. I wish I had known this game earlier! I am sharing it with many of my friends who can take it to their students.
Thanks for a detailed description!
Balroop, thanks so much for wanting to share this activity with teachers you know. The first time I played it was in a class for teaching ESL. I knew right away it would be a useful activity when it came to teaching books like Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Very interesting and what better way to get someones attention than by a reward, potentially, of chocolate; it would work for me. I am sure the discussion following the game can get quite lively but I imagine extremely interesting and insightful.
Tim, the best part with each particular class was to observe what each team did with the chocolate they won. Hardly any of them would give the teacher a piece, but more groups would tend to share it with the other students in class. When we got around to talking about individual reactions, it was always interesting to see how they would realize what group they belonged to such as tattle-tale, whiners, etc. It was soooooo difficult for me not to interject, but otherwise, chaos would not ensue.
Sounds like a great way to generate discussions on difficult topics. I don’t quite follow the chocolate part in it, but anything that gives you chocolate as an incentive sounds good to me. Interesting and different post Jeri.
Kathy, the discussion that follows the activity helps surface how the chocolate represents the bigger and better prize in life that we often pursue relentlessly without thinking of others. Chocolate provides a great incentive since most people go crazy when they see the huge candy bar that is placed at the end of the row of pennies.
Excellent game which interjects unfairness thus with a deep purpose behind it: to try to answer to the “rhetorical” question: “Is Life fair?”…
Taking it further, this game might have social, economical and political shades. Which made me think of the german movie “The Wave” (A cautionary tale about the roots of fascism). Worth watching it…
Thanks for sharing this great post, dear Jeri. All the best to you, Aquileana 🙂
Aqui, it really is an activity that throws students for a loop. They will proclaim how life is much for fair nowadays than it used to be, but once we get into the game and the nitty-gritty of how it relates to the literature at hand, they start to see just how many societal forces can play a role in how successful a person is.
Love this idea: would you mind if I shared a link to it on my camping site, http://www.thecampwhisperer.com? And also, I don’t think I understand how the game is actually played (at least to start out). Do they take turns rolling and then get to move based on their role? What do they do with the tokens during the game? And do you have the teams start at different places? I understand the larger concept, it’s the actual functioning of the game I don’t quite get. Also, it would be VERY interesting to have 3 different brands of chocolate, one fair trade, one organic, one neither, and talk about that at the end of the game. No one probably thought about the justice behind the game and the chocolate itself!
Janel, yes feel free to link to this activity and thank you. As the post describes, the teacher arbitrarily decides who goes first. After the first team roles, they get to decide who goes next. The majority of classes I’ve tried this with tend to stick to the original order dictated by the first round. However, things get really interesting when one group will change the order and skip over a particular group for whatever reason. The students will always look to the teacher to make things fair, so that is when I shrug my shoulders and let them argue. I hope that’s clear. The functioning of the game requires a tolerance for chaos, and some teachers are uncomfortable introducing that into the classroom for lots of valid reasons. I like your idea of using different brands of chocolate as well. That would add yet another layer to the purpose of the game.
The Chocolate Game is very interesting in understanding social inequality and also makes a good social experiment as well. Wish they had this going at my old school!
Vijay
Vijay, thanks for stopping by. It’s always good to see a new face around here. I can’t recall many activities like this when I was in school either. I probably liked science for the mere fact that at least the labs were hands on and interactive.
Jeri this sounds like a great way to really get an understanding of social injustice and start the conversation going. I watched bits and pieces of that Utopia TV show that is on Fox now. It is a bit ridiculous to throw strangers together from all different backgrounds and have them govern themselves and come up with Utopia. There are just too many different ideas of what a perfect society consists of… Food, religion, politics, etc. Based on your background and life experience what you see as perfection will be completely different than the next person.
Susan, I haven’t seen that show, but if I was currently teaching that would help provide a great resource that students would connect with. I think The Lord of Flies best teaches us how no matter that society (on both the large and small scale) has a tendency of boiling situations down to “us vs. them.”
Great game, Jeri. I’d even use it in an adult training program themed around valuing diversity and employee engagement.
Jagoda, that’s good to hear. I thought this activity would be one that appealed to you.
This game sounds like a excellent way to get a group thinking and talking about inequality. It would be enlightening for participants to review how they felt at various points in the game.
Donna, it’s always eye-opening come discussion time. I always looked forward to the reasons the winning group would give on why or why not they felt compelled to share their chocolate.
That’s a pretty interesting game. I would imagine it could lead to some pretty insightful conclusions about how different students act in that situation and what their actions say about them.
Ken, the best games are when students start to call each other out on their behavior. Many of us have the tendency to shrink into the background, but I’ve often been surprised that some of the more reticent students end up being the ones who will stand up for fair play when some of the more boisterous students start to play dirty.
Hi Jeri, I read this with interest, but also a sense of confusion – I can’t picture the connection between the pennies and chocolate, the positioning of same and the dice. I’m assuming each roll of the dice determines how many pennies? a team advances, but beyond that I can’t see how the kids are meant to interact. Sorry, I’m tired and my brain is shutting down for the night. 🙁
Andrea, it’s definitely a game that invites chaos and confusion (much like life). Each roll of the dice does equate to how many pennies forward the group can move. It gets interesting when the group who gets to the first piece of chocolate gets to make a rule. More often than not, a group will forget to exclude themselves from their own rule. The chocolate equals power. The pennies represent how money motivates much of our advancement in life. It also never failed that some student would ask if they could have my pennies when the game was over 😉
Oh! Duh. Thank you. For some reason I saw the chocolates only as a reward. I didn’t picture them as a tool/weapon. Now it makes sense. 😀
What a great game Jeri! I don’t personally have any opportunities to use this right now but sent a link to this post to my sister who teaches in CA and I’ve made notes in case I have have a chance to try it. Thanks for the inspiration. 🙂
Love this game Jeri. When I was a corporate trainer this would have been great in many scenarios of leadership or team building. There’s something magical that happens when students, participants, get up and move around in activities like this. Thanks so much Jeri. You’re making learning fun and THAT means long lasting affects.
Patricia, it takes a lot of energy to make learning fun that’s for sure 🙂
This does sound like an excellent game, Jeri! See, I always knew chocolate would help the world, one sweet square at a time 🙂
Christy, chocolate really does make everything better 😉 Though at times the students were ready to have a fist fight over it.
Oh wow this is absolutely amazing, Jeri. Great job! I wish my mom and/or dad were still around so that I could ask them if they ever did this type of game/activity or a version thereof in their classes. I would find the interaction with the students and them calling each other out on rules, etc the most interesting. I’m sending this link to friends and a step sister who are in Education. P.S. Had we had this activity in school and there was a cheese burger, pizza or mac n’ cheese at the end…I would have won every time – team work be darned 🙂 Good post…
Mike, haha students will do anything for pizza!
That’s an ingenious way of demonstrating a couple of aspects of life – not just justice, but communication, co-operation, maybe even compassion. I’ll bet this made for some lively classes, and left strong impressions on your students. A powerful hands-on experience that I’m sure they’ll remember for a long time. Hopefully things didn’t get too unruly!
Krystyna, the Chocolate Game was one of my favorites because more than a few lightbulbs went off during the activity. It only ever got really unruly the first time I tried it. It was with a class of over 30 students and some of the boys got super-heated over the whole thing.
My idea of Utopia is an unlimited supply of chocolate! But seriously, this sounds like a really intriguing game. Would be great for a leadership retreat or seminar.
Meredith, I think my Utopia would have a place for chocolate as well. I once did that activity with a group of teachers on one of our in-service days. It served as a nice complement to the ESL workshops we were taking that day. It’s easy to forget that many students have homes that make it difficult for them to do as well in school as they could given better circumstances.
Wow Jeri, you sure are different than the teachers I had. Back then it was sit down, shut up, listen and memorize. I like your way best – I’ll bet those kids were talking about the game and everything it represented in the hallways and at home, all things that will help them to remember the results.
Lenie, I think a good classroom has to have balance. Something like the Chocolate Game is out of the ordinary, but I’ve also had students describes rocks… anything to break out of the ordinary routine and wake their minds up!
Love the idea of the chocolate game, Jeri. What a great way of making students discuss social injustice. As you know, globalisation and neo-liberalism are aat the moment the two main reasons for global poverty and injustice. And they are both American ideas that have been forced upon the rest of the world by corporate America through Capitol Hill and the IMF. Do American student feel the world is just or injust? Do they know that since the 70s ideas originating in their country has resulted in enormous injustices? Would be interesting to know. Would they like a minimym vage to be implemented in the United States? Are they aware that people on lower levels in society have a better standard of living in other Western countries? would love to ask them a lot of questions but my comment would be too long:-)
Catarina, love your line of questioning 🙂 You would make a great teacher in that you always explore an issue from so many angles.
Sounds like a fun and tasty exercise. Probably wouldn’t have as much success with toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Loni, that gives me a new idea for other ways the game could be played and how discussion could be raised over what we tend to desire as incentives as well as when we are more likely do act for extrinsic rather than intrinsic reasons.
Great Idea of Chocolate game with students Jeri. Surly you are a wonderful teacher. I will read it again to think how can I apply it in my Mathematics class. But surly I can, I have to think about it.
But I am forwarding this to my few friends, who teach English grammar. It is wonderful idea to keep students busy and help them to learn.
I love chocolate and now I am in love with this game but I will try it with my daughter. Somehow I will use it. Thank you for a great share. She do not know how to write but she can tell me her thoughts .
Anna, I have tried my best to be a good teacher that much is true 🙂 Thanks for forwarding the link to some of your friends.
This sounds like such a good game – would kind of love to play it even though I know how unfair it will be! Great way to get people thinking and talking though!
Catharine, introducing unfairness in the classroom goes against every expectation students have for that environment. The outcomes are great because such discomfort can jog the mind into being more in-tune with the point of exercise.
Excellent. A game that makes the players think, reflect. It can certainly be played outside a classroom; I would love to have a few corporate america executives play it first, then invite random folks from other countries and play it again. It’s intriguing how the concepts of unfairness and “us vs. them” play at the micro level (for example, at the local community) and at the macro level (e.g., terms of trade between nations, etc.).
Great post, Jeri!
Hello there and thanks for stopping by. It would be nice to know what to call you other than 1/2d 😉 I like the idea of having people from other countries play the game as well.
This is such a fascinating topic you explained in your blog. It reminds me of the Stanford Experiment that occurred in the early 1970’s. Basically, students at Stanford were made either prisoners, or guards. Abuse and intimidation by the guards soon set in, and some of the prisoners co-operated in this abuse, just so they would not be the blunt of it by the guards. It got so bad, they had to stop the experiment after only 6 days.
Maybe we are will descend into the Animal Farm, or Lord of the Flies scenario, when we have the freedom to make the rules. And as your game suggest, it is the golden rule. Those with the gold make the rules.
William, I remember hearing about that experiment. For better or worse I agree with everything you stated in your comment. It doesn’t take much to break down the niceties of society.
It would be interesting to see how they carry this into real life when real life starts beating them down. (mind you this is the cynic in me shining through)
Jon, we need more cynics in the world 😉
I would try this game if I was a teacher. I would love to hear the different thoughts and see the reactions that it would get from the children.
Jason, the reactions are all over the place. No two games ever went down the exact same way.
I have seen this kind of game played out in different environments. It gets interesting when people start to notice the inequality. Great teaching / learning moment tool.
Cheryl, the Chocolate Game went so well with Animal Farm. I really miss teaching that novel.
This is creative teaching at it’s best combining a reading assignment with active participation. You said you had hetero-genetic groups, I wonder what the outcomes of homo-genetic groups would be.
Pam, you raise an interesting point. In the past, I have allowed students to pick their own groups and they do tend to group together by gender when left to their own devices. True to form, female students do tend to want to play nice, but many of them are also very outspoken in calling their male counterparts out on aggressive behavior. If a class is mostly female, the game takes a lot less longer and tends to be more orderly. Personality types make all the difference as well. Sometimes a dream group of students is just so cooperative. That doesn’t happen very often though.
Jeri- I can say where the Chocolate Game would be great for corporations. There are inequalities in life. From the deductions maybe one could change. I think involvement pays off.
Arleen, and prizes from Garrett Industries would help sweeten the pot 😉
I hope teachers are “playing this game” all over the country!
Candy, it really is amazing how many different activities teachers can come up with when not having to worry about teaching to this or that standard.
Jeri, I loved when teachers would have us plat games in school and then have a discussion after. I am sure this game makes for great discussion. Great idea!
Crystal, I’m just lucky to have come across the Chocolate Game from a great ESL professor I had for one of my classes when I was earning my teaching certificate. He was a great guy.
Sounds like a great lesson Jeri. Anything involving chocolate is bound to grab student’s attention! 🙂
This should be something played in all schools at all grades. It’s a lesson people of all ages need to learn.
Phil, it’s always my hope that the Chocolate Game might spark an emerging awareness of social inequality somewhere in the midst of the egocentric teenage brain 🙂
Hi Jeri, I’ve been searching for a social justice themed activity for 30-60 teenagers and this seems like a great idea to get the kids feeling how privileged they might be compared to the rest of the world, especially those who are working hard for very little gain. Thankyou!
However, I’m not really sure about how the mid-game rule changes work. Do you have any examples of any rule changes that groups have made in the past?
Hi Mark, thanks for stopping by. Typical mid-game rules that student teams I’ve worked with in the past have included adding rules such as rolling a five means go back five spaces rather than forward or rolling a two means that everyone except the team making the new rule loses a turn.
Hi Mark, thanks for stopping by. Typical mid-game rules that student teams I’ve worked with in the past have included adding rules such as rolling a five means go back five spaces rather than forward or rolling a two means that everyone except the team making the new rule loses a turn.
Just curious, are the chocolate pieces placed at the very end of the line of pennies? Or say, the smallest one is placed at penny 10, the medium sized piece perhaps at 25, and the largest at 30?
Good question. I place the largest piece of chocolate at the end of the line. For the two smaller ones, the placement can be totally arbitrary. I tend to place the smallest one somewhere around 15 or 20 and then the medium one around 25.