Below is one of the many lesson plans from the free online book Cooperative Learning and the SDGs (Lim et al., 2024). Let’s look at the lesson plan together.  

Lesson Plan Title:  The Freerice Game 

More Background Information: Achieving each of the SDGs requires overcoming difficulties, but SDG 2, Zero Hunger, might seem to be the easiest goal to achieve. After all, humans already produce enough food to feed the Earth’s entire human population; the problem is distribution of that food. Unfortunately, that’s a complex problem.

An example of food distribution’s complexity can be seen in the fact that a great deal of plant food, such as soy beans and corn, is fed to the cows, chickens, and other animals whom some humans eat. The people who raise these animals have more money to buy the soy beans, corn, etc. than do poor people without enough food for whom soybeans and corn are part of their own diet.

While trying to untangle the complex problems associated with hunger, we can help a little by playing the Freerice game. This game can be played alone, but playing it in cooperative groups can be more fun and might help learning. IT platforms, such as Kahoot!, can be used, but they tend to use time pressure, which makes cooperation more difficult.

One way to make the Freerice game into a cooperative game is to use a cooperative learning technique, such as Tell/Check and Record, part of the Tell family of cooperative learning techniques. Others include Tell/Paraphrase (one person says and their partner paraphrases), Tell/Question  (one person says and their partners asks a question), and Tell/Disagree (one person says and their partner disagrees politely). In this case, Tell/Check and Record could work as follows:

Steps in the Lesson Plan

Step 1 – Students form groups of two. They may want to use just one electronic device to encourage cooperation. They open the Freerice game: https://play.freerice.com/

Step 2 – To do Tell/Check and Record, the members of the group of two take turns to play the role of Teller and role of Checker and Recorder. The Teller makes a guess about the answer to a multiple-choice question in the Freerice game. The person in the Checker and Recorder role for that question agrees or disagrees with the Teller’s guess. The Teller makes the final decision and uses the device to select the choice they think might be correct. If the Teller’s choice is correct, the Checker and Recorder says, “Well done.” If the guess is wrong, the Checker and Recorder records the item for future study.

Step 3 – The roles rotate for each multiple-choice item. When time is up, each group records how much rice they earned. They also discuss any wrong answers and how to learn from their wrong answers. For instance, they could practice difficult vocabulary by creating a story that uses the vocabulary.

The class calculates the class total for rice earned. Students can increase the class total by playing Freerice outside of class. Indeed, the game can be seen as a constructive form of competition: the class cooperates to compete against hunger. This is an example of the fact that competition need not be against people. Instead, people around the world can cooperate to compete to defeat hunger.

Lesson Plan Extension Possibilities

A) If the students need more help while playing the game, Tellers from two groups could share their answers before they make a final decision. This promotes cooperation across groups.

B) The Freerice game can be used as a warm-up activity throughout the school year. The class can keep a running total of how many grains of rice they have earned. A small bowl of rice is about 5,000 grains of rice; so, the class can track how many meals they have donated over a year.

C) The Freerice game has lots of different question categories including pop music, movies, science, and even some about the SDGs. Students can try many different categories of questions.

D) Students can make questions for each other using the same format as the Freerice game. This could be done in a manner similar to the CL technique Exchange-A-Question. In Exchange-A-Question, in a pair, each student writes a question, writes an answer for their question, exchanges questions (not answers), answers their partner’s question, and finally compares answers with their partner.