"I first introduced Cranium to my classroom as a treat for my drama students after they nailed their first performance of the year. As I watched even the most introverted of my students come to life, I wondered how I could use the game in a way more specific to my classroom material. Like so many teachers, I was using Jeopardy and team trivia games to make studying more enjoyable, but the biggest problem was that usually only a couple students would be answering for the team, and many students ended up being left out.

"With Cranium, everyone can be involved, and every individual is valued for his or her unique contributions. As I watched my drama students play, a light bulb over my head nearly popped with brilliance, and I designed questions for an English class review game as well. Rather than create new cards, I simply type up a rotating list of items for each Cranium category and act as 'Master of Ceremonies' as the kids play. For Zelpuz and Blankout cards, I write the puzzles out on large sheets of paper that allow the entire team to view the puzzle at the same time.

"My students act out characters from novels, draw scenes from poems, define and spell vocabulary words (backwards, of course), and answer multiple choice or true/false questions about class material. I've even had them hum songs. In my drama classes, they hum numbers from musicals, and in my English classes, they tackle tunes from certain time periods.

"There's an activity for every one of the multiple intelligences, so students are able to have a blast showing how smart they really are. They actually look forward to exam prep days and have said that they feel better prepared through my adapted Cranium than by any other method I had used for review.

"If any other teachers are interested in trying this themselves, my advice to them is this: Buy a large amount of inexpensive clay, as the kids will immediately grub up the good stuff. Clay will fall on the floor, it will be tossed from group to group, and it will definitely end up chock-full of the strangest bits of this and that before the day is through!

"But trust me, the kids will love playing Cranium as part of their studies, and they will even amaze themselves with what they know. The knowledge they swore they never learned in class will reveal itself when they're having fun. For a teacher, that is the greatest joy of all."