Games
Overview
Games help students visualize how to connect one fact to another. By engaging student Attention, games motivate students to develop meaningful connections with content and can lead to positive memories of learning.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this teacher explains and plays "Back to the Board" or "Don't Say It" with her class. Students make connections by using their existing knowledge to describe the word, which supports Long-term Memory and builds students' Vocabulary.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Learn how SpellingCity lets teachers create their own word lists and definitions to be incorporated into spelling and Vocabulary games. With a variety of games and levels, teachers can provide increasingly complex words to support deeper Vocabulary building.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Active Learning Strategies
Physically acting out a text enhances reading comprehension.
Expressing ideas through visuals and audio, and understanding others' ideas in these forms, is as critical in today's world as traditional reading and writing.
Students activate more cognitive processes by exploring and representing their understandings in visual form.
When students explain their thinking process aloud, they recognize the strategies they use and solidify their understanding.
Visiting places connected to classroom learning provides opportunities to deepen understanding through firsthand experiences.
Playful activities can support the development of learners' Metacognition and also inspire their narratives and writing.
Project-based learning (PBL) actively engages learners in authentic tasks designed to create products that answer a given question or solve a problem.
Response devices boost engagement by encouraging all students to answer every question.
