The Hero Deck

Using play as a learning tool.

Do you have five minutes spare after a lesson?  Bring out the Hero Deck.  Students (and teachers) love playing this addictive card game.  The bonus is that they’ll be learning as they play.  In no time, your students will be able to recall which heroes were active during World War II, which were born in Australia, and which have the highest ratings in Selflessness.

To get the most use out of the Hero Deck, consider using them as a launching pad for lessons in virtually any subject. There are examples below and I know you’ll come up with dozens yourself. These cards feature 52 heroes from around the world with biographical details and ratings in each of the Heroic Attributes.

Make the Hero Deck an integral part of your classroom for both play and learning.

 

 

Each deck is $27.  Shipping is free anywhere in the world.

 

* You can use most credit cards via PayPal

How To Play

The deck comes packaged with instructions for two games. Below you can see all sorts of ways people have used The Hero Deck to assist instruction and learning in their classrooms. Add your ideas in the comments.

Social Studies

  • Hand out a card to each student and have them create a report on the hero and the time they lived in.
  • Discuss observable issues of the various continents represented.  Look for similarities and differences between continents.
  • Create a timeline of the heroes.  Look for clustering and discuss why some decades have so many heroes.  e.g. 1940s for World War II.
  • Hand out a card to each student and have them find a hero (not from the deck) who is closely related to the one on the card.  The relations could be age, decade, location, actions, issues, race, nationality…
  • Note that there are no heroes representing South America.  Have students research heroes from South America and submit them to The Gallery of Heroes.

Language Arts

  • Discuss the relative merits of fictional versus real-world heroes.
  • Have students choose a card and present an argument for changing the rating of one of the hero’s Heroic Attributes.
  • Have students create a card for a hero not represented in the deck.
  • Hand out a card to each student and have them present a report on the hero’s life.
  • Have students make a persuasive argument on the hero in the deck they think is the most heroic.

Math

  • Teach bar graphs using the Heroic Attributes on the cards.
  • Teach probability using the sets (i.e. Continent, Active Decade, and Birth Month)  e.g. What is the probability of drawing a card with an African hero?
  • Teach percentages by calculating distribution of various data.  e.g. What percentage of heroes were born in January?  What would you expect that percentage to be?
  • Teach averages by examining the Heroic Attributes.  Observe which attributes have higher scores.
  • Have students come up with a different way of representing the Heroic Attributes using a graph.
  • Hand out two cards to each student and have them create a Venn Diagram using the data on the card.

 

 

Each deck is $27.  Shipping is free anywhere in the world.

 

* You can use most credit cards via PayPal