Board Game Teaches Radnor Students Government Lessons

WAYNE, PA – Who says school can't be fun? The students Government and Economics teacher Paul Wright's class sure had fun playing the popular board game Catan to learn the inner workings of government recently.

Catan, formerly known as Settlers of Catan, is a worldwide board-game phenomenon created by German gamemaker Klaus Teuber.

Through it, students in Wright's 5th and 7th period Government and Economics classes explored the concepts of supply, demand, trade, barter and opportunity cost.

"The game is really fun and it also makes you think," freshman Jahmir Dixon said. "It's really competitive and you can win in many different ways."

Catan is played on a hexagon-shaped board with numbered spaces representing different terrains that house resources such as lumber, brick, grain, wool and ore, the Radnor Township School District said in a release. Players assume the roles of settlers, attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring these resources.

During their turns, students roll two dice to tell them what terrain they’ll land on and which resources they’ll gather. They use these resources to construct roads, settlements (worth one point) and cities (worth two). The first player to 10 points wins.

"The game claims that it is easy to learn, but can take a long time to learn how to play well," Wright said. "So the challenge is coming back to it again and again to get better, as opposed to playing it once and never seeing it again. Most of the students in this year's classes became interested in it, so a tournament seemed like a natural next step."

Over the course of the fourth quarter, Wright's students played a series of in-class games. The six players who earned the most points playing on May 9, 16 and 23 were invited to compete at a championship table in an all-day Catan tournament in the Black Box Theatre on May 30.

The remaining students competed in groups of four to six and faculty members were invited to join in the fun.

Dixon was crowned tournament champion.

"I went in with a plan: build the most cities and roads...get the biggest army and longest road," Dixon said. "I was just building a lot and I won."

The ninth-grade Government and Economics course provides students with an opportunity to study the key concepts of government and economics and how they are interrelated, the district said. Economics topics include economic theories, the global economy, macro‐ and micro-economic concepts, business organizations, entrepreneurship, and the stock market.

The students will use their experiences playing Catan as part of their Common Assessment on Economics.

"This was a wonderful way of engaging [our students] and teaching them about economics at the same time," assistant principal PT Kevgas said.

Image via Radnor Township School District