Junior High Music Trivia "Game Show" Game

I have made up a game that has been highly successful with Junior High students, and I thought I would share it with all of you.

This is a game show type game that students and I created last year. What I let them do is brainstorm and come up with CONFIDENTIAL music trivia questions and answers about their favorite songs or musicians, genres, etc. I did this with 4-8. Of course, I don't have the same set of students in succession for those grades. In other words, I have K-5 at one school and 6-8 at another (the K-5 school is not a feeder school to the JH).

After the students generated questions, I wrote them all out on 3x5 recipe cards (you may have a better idea). Once I had a deck of about 50 cards, I let the students play. I divided the class in half and let each team come up with a team captain and a team name. I let the team captain then choose a person to "buzz in" with instruments that are different (e.g. maracas/tambourine). The team captain's main job is to do ALL the answering for the group (thus avoiding noisy chaos and arguing).

My rules are:
1. Team captain is the only person that can speak to me, everyone else WHISPERS to them.
2. Any team member who argues, gets too loud, or talks while the teacher is trying to read the next question will cause their team to lose points and incur a possible disciplinary action if they should be a repeat offender.
3. The person "buzzing in" should not do so until the ENTIRE question is read (that means all choices on a multiple choice question have to be read, too). It is also suggested that the team know the answer BEFORE buzzing in.
***NOTE: These rules are flexible. I read the question from the card, point to the first team to buzz in, and so on. There is no penalty for guessing, but you have to be careful how you approach this. The little strategists in the room will catch on quickly.

Now this is where the game can be molded into your own. What I do is once I ask the question from the card, the first team to buzz in gets the first chance to answer. I usually just look at my watch and time them 15 seconds (more for final questions). I am supposing you could also use a stopwatch of some sort. If they cannot answer correctly in the specified time, then the other team gets a chance for the point. I made nearly all the questions worth one point, but that part is up to you. On the last question of the game, I make the point value a make or break situation. In other words, either team could win. I will usually save a challenging question for last just to make it interesting.

This is something that the JH students really found enjoyable. After my initial speech about school-appropriate material, they were more than happy to be discussing and writing facts about THEIR music. I have no idea - there may already be a game that is identical to this, and I just don't know about it. I hope you find this info useful and hope you will try it. It is worth the hassle. Oh, I even had the students decorate the backs of the cards (after the game) and gave out prizes to the winning teams.

Some example questions:
1. Who sings "Don't Worry, Be Happy"?
2. Name all five members of The Backstreet Boys.
3. What classic country singer is the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter" about?
(Maybe I will eventually type up the questions that I already have SOMEDAY... I have over 300 now!)

It is a good idea to relate the questions to what you are studying in music class, too. What I mentioned to students to get them thinking up ideas was to think of what music you like and what you know about the musicians. Also, ask specific questions about a type of music. I was truly amazed at the ideas they came up with. Here is the kicker... I correlated all of this with social studies and made it a democracy. I let the "people" come up with titles for this game show, and they also voted to see what the title was going to be. (This was at the time of the Presidential election so I had to add a special clause: THERE WILL BE NO RECOUNTS!) The name that they decided on was "Whose Song Is It, Anyway?"

OK one more thing, I also decided that this was going to be an ongoing project, so I have each class come up with new questions (if they can) each new time we play the game (which is about twice a year). The outdated questions can always be replaced. I also numbered the cards to give me some sort of reference point.

I had a great deal of fun being the game show host, and the kids REALLY had a blast and ask for this game A LOT! I hope I haven't forgotten any pertinent information! (I am really good at forgetting stuff)... Good luck!