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.

Use It in the Classroom

Interactive games, like match-game puzzles, allow learners to practice and assess their Vocabulary knowledge by matching words with their respective definitions. These fun games promote a positive emotional connection with learning and improve memory consolidation.

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 this word puzzle game incorporates spelling, phonemic awareness, and Vocabulary in a challenging but interactive way. Color-coding the consonants and vowels reinforces Alphabet Knowledge and letter recognition, and providing increasingly complex words supports deeper Vocabulary building.

Designing games for learners to practice their Decoding, Vocabulary, and Sight Recognition skills encourages students' Attention on practicing and improving. Through playful games, learners reinforce skills and concepts to promote further memory consolidation.

View References

Resources

Below are additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.

Examples

Crossword Puzzles

Crossword puzzles applying vocabulary from Read Naturally stories

Examples

ELA Games

Free online games to practice letters, sounds, spelling, and Vocabulary

Examples

Why Use Games?

Five benefits to incorporating games in the classroom

Professional Development

Teaching Academic Language

Free CE-credit webinar discussing the use of multimodal strategies to teach academic language