Whether you’re trying to help your class wrap their young minds around mathematical, budgetary, or other more thematically specific concepts, The Price Is Right format can make it a fun experience for all involved.
As such, it’s no surprise that there are a number of different classroom-oriented versions, from totally free DIY game plans, to app-based electronic formats that you have to pay for (not much, though).
So, in today’s post, we’ll be guiding you through the very best options.
No matter your budget or pedagogical goals, you’ll find the perfect The Price Is Right game for your classroom here!
This is probably the best The Price Is Right game for arithmetic, mental math, and decimals.
It’s also relatively affordable, which is always a bonus when it comes to teaching resources.
Compatible with both Powerpoint and Google Slides, you can choose whichever presentation platform you’re most comfortable with, and then just follow the instructions provided by the game.
All you’ll have to do is some basic planning to make it relevant to your lesson, but that’s it; the game handles the rest.
That means no lengthy crafting sessions or complicated game formulation for you — Hooray!
It even arrives with a host script so you can reveal your inner Bob Barker and really put on a show.
But by far the coolest thing about this game is that if you would like to be more hands-on with game preparation, you can edit it in a number of ways and tailor it to your mission plans.
For instance, you can switch out the items with others that are more relevant to your students.
The Price Is Right is also a fantastic way to introduce English as a second language learners to common items and how they’re priced in the US.
This guide takes you through the entire process and offers a number of thoughts on how to proceed once the game comes to an end, ensuring students make the educational gains you’re hoping for.
It’s a pretty simple idea that involves you sourcing images of various products, researching their prices, then making a slide show that challenges students to pronounce the names of the products and, of course, estimate their associated prices.
You won’t have to pay a penny to get this game on the go, and it can be an extremely fun and rewarding experience for language learners.
We’d even suggest using it as an ice-breaker game at the start of the course, as your students can be split into teams and encouraged to communicate and bond with one another.
This slide show is perhaps the best for teaching children about budgeting and general financial matters.
Ironically, it’s also one of the most expensive, but if you don’t mind forking out a few bucks for the betterment of your class, it’s a no-brainer!
It’s 55 slides long, giving you plenty of material to work with (enough for multiple sessions), but unfortunately, it’s only compatible with Google Slides, so Powerpoint is out of the question.
While younger children will certainly enjoy this game, as the primary goal is to impart budgetary knowledge, they might not take much from it.
You’re better off presenting this game to children between grades 9 and 12.
This isn’t a The Price Is Right Game as such. Rather, it’s a dry-erase spinning wheel that you can use to create your own version of the game, with each fraction of the wheel labeled with a different item.
It’s a super fun way to get your students engaged and to establish a true game show-like atmosphere in the classroom.
As it’s not as specific as the other options on this list, you can perpetually repurpose it to suit your class’s needs.
You can even use it in a more general way in order to liven up your classroom.
For instance, you could write your students’ names in the slots, and spin the wheel to decide the order of presentations after an assignment.
We absolutely adore this free resource from the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
It offers numerous 4-round ideas, each focused on a different mathematical discipline.
For instance, the numbers and operations section suggests a “bullseye game”, a “grocery game”, a “check game”, and an “it’s in the bag game”, while the algebra section suggests a “balance game”, a “do the math game”, a “magic number game”, and a “range game”.
You’ll also get suggestions for geometry and measurement The Price Is Right games, calculus The Price Is Right games, and probability and statistics The Price Is Right games.
So no matter where you are in the syllabus, you’ll have something to brighten your students’ day.
If you’ve got a television handy in your school, consider picking up the DVD edition of The Price Is Right game.
As it sticks to the formula of the actual show, it’s instantly recognizable to kids, encouraging engagement.
It arrives with six wipe-clean boards, meaning you can split your class into teams of six and have them working together to guess the prices of various products.
The only drawback here is that you might have to add your own little mathematical challenges to ensure your children are actually learning as they play.
After all, fun in the classroom is great, but the primary mission is always, of course, to educate.
This game puts a unique spin on the classic The Price Is Right blueprint by tailoring it to economics.
It encourages students to apply the supply and demand economic model to labor markets rather than commercial markets, with each mini-game fashioned after the games from the infamous television game show.
This resource provides PDF game sheet downloads, so you can print out as many as necessary, and encourages you to make your own raffle tickets that can be used in a last-day-of-year raffle, which we think is a fantastic way to increase student engagement.
What’s more, as each mini-game takes only 10 minutes, and there are only three rounds, you can cram plenty of other activities into your lesson before you start playing, positioning this game as a fun reward to close the lesson out with.
If you’re looking for a simple worksheet that will get your students practicing numbers between 0 and many million, the folks over at BusyTeacher have you covered.
It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s effective and completely free.
Plus, as it’s quite rudimentary, you can add your own personal flair to the game or tailor it to suit your lesson mission plan.
Taking advantage of the fantastic resource that is YouTube, you can treat your ESL learners to a super fun and informative game of How Much Is It?, a game modeled on the general principles of The Price Is Right.
It’s quite rudimentary, so your students can grasp enough of what’s happening to get involved and engage in the learning process, and as it’s a YouTube video, it’s free to access and can easily be replayed or slowed down if they need to hear or see something again.
Here’s another option for a young economics class.
Taking the general idea of The Price Is Right, this game is aimed at teaching children about pricing analysis, what is meant by the term profit, and how this understanding can prevent them from losing money later in life.
More specifically, after a play-through of this fun and insightful game, your students should be able to determine pricing factors of products, as well as explain break-even analysis for products and services.
Last but absolutely not least, we have a dynamite Powerpoint based reimagining of The Price Is Right that focuses on baby-oriented products such as diapers, bottles, formula, and so on.
It imparts essential life skills, and although it does cost, you get plenty of bang for your buck — There are 39 slides in total, and almost every single one is embellished with audio, animation, or at the very least an interesting transition.
Over the course of the game, young adults will learn about the real-life financial challenges of caring for a baby or babies, from the very general ongoing costs of single-use supplies to the one-off costs of kitting out a nursery.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there is no shortage of ways to utilize the infamous The Price Is Right blueprint to great effect in your classroom.
The beauty of this game is that it’s incredibly adaptable.
With a few tweaks here and there, you can fine-tune it to suit almost any classroom situation — So, what are you waiting for? Get practicing your Bob Barker impressions in the mirror!
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
