Enter the free Mission US, a suite of games aimed at grades 5-9 that interactively address the critical events in United States history. These are taught in a choose-your-own-adventure approach that encourages students to dig deeply into history, evaluating cause and effect, and making choices that they can support with evidence. Creators of these games wanted to help students relate to the events and people by being part of the action.
Game topics include:
- Crown or Colony
- Flight to Freedom
- A Cheyenne Odyssey
- City of Immigrants
- Up from the Devastation of the Dust Bowl
- Japanese incarceration (coming)
- Civil Rights Movement (coming)
Mission US gameplay is web-based, on PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks, and even some iPads. It works best on Chrome, not so well on IE (but does work on Edge). Each mission includes an Educator Guide with lesson plans, questions, and suggestions to support struggling students as well as ideas for how to easily integrate the games into the curriculum and class time. Some of the most popular integrations are how to research, critical thinking, consequences of choice, perspective-taking, literacy, cause and effect, and writing skills (for those who use the writing prompts, reflections, and review questions).
Games take a couple of class sessions but this depends upon how many of the available resources are included with the gameplay. In my experience, everyone loved these lessons.
Teach Your Monster to Read is a free online early learning platform for literacy instruction. It teaches children letters and sounds with fun, engaging videos.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games, Math Resources | Posted on June 23, 2015
Prodigy claims to be the world’s most engaging math game and has over 300 curriculum-aligned math skills for your students to master. Moving beyond simple number sense, Prodigy covers Geometry, Spatial Sense, Probability, and many more crucial skills. There are even specific curricula for EQAO Grade 3 and 6! Prodigy actively adapts to keep each of your students learning at their own pace, with a learning algorithm that automatically identifies knowledge gaps and helps students through difficult concepts.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games, Gamification | Posted on May 5, 2014
Gamify Your Class Without Electricity has excellent ideas on how to use games to increase student engagement and achievement.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games, Leadership | Posted on November 8, 2013
Five Leadership Lessons from Playing Candy Crush makes me feel less guilty for time spent on this addictive game!
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Coding, Games, Gamification | Posted on September 24, 2013
Transforming the Way We Learn: Four New Ways Kids Can Learn with Minecraft This article outlines ways Minecraft can be used in classrooms to enhance student learning. Examples include writing, learning code, and even lessons in digital citizenship.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games | Posted on April 3, 2013
Novel Games is a collection of learning games free to students. What I like is you can play from the web site or even embed in your own web site.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Coding, Contests, Games, Gamification | Posted on March 26, 2013
Imagine Cup happily invites aspiring game developers, ages 9 to 18, to learn coding by developing a video game with Kodu, an easy-to-learn, game-creation toolkit and programming language available for free download on Windows-based PCs. We’ve drawn on the expertise of Mercy Corps and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop to launch this new challenge and we can’t wait to see what young coders create!
The Kodu Challenge runs from March 19 through May 17, 2013, and invites students in two age brackets (9-12 and 13-18) to design games on the Kodu platform. For this challenge, students will explore the relationships between water and people through the medium of Kodu video games. Although the only limits for these students are their imaginations, the partnership with Mercy Corps offers the chance to learn and explore water-related issues, including disaster relief, clean-water engineering projects and much more through a video series launching soon right here on our site. While acquiring valuable skills such as critical thinking, storytelling and programming, students in both age brackets will compete for first-place prizes of US$3,000, second-place prizes of US$2,000, and third-place prizes of US$1,000.
Math Trail Powered by Google Maps, these exciting trails take you to locations connected by a theme. Students must use an email address and then they can choose the level of difficulty. This game combines map skills, knowledge of geography, and of course, math skills.
Storybots is a place young students can create online books and videos.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games, Social Studies Resources | Posted on March 1, 2013
National Geographic Math Adventures is a game where student use map skills to save animals.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games | Posted on February 22, 2013
Spree Learning Games
Spree Games is the Leading Resource for Digital K-12 Educational Learning Games.
It consists of a public site listing all games available, and a subscription service allowing students to play games, including proprietary ones to Spree, to save lists, and to track success.
Beanstalk is a game that focuses on explicitly teaching balance to the player, as they must plant flowers to counter balance the different bugs falling onto the plank. This is another good online game for science and STEM activities.
Rumble Blocks is a game is designed to teach children ages 4-11 how to build and identify stable structures. In the game, players must build towers by manipulating a series of blocks in order to help a friendly alien creature get to its spaceship so it can return to home. Great for the engineering component of STEM!
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games | Posted on October 31, 2012
EdGames site
Are you interested in using games in your classroom but just can’t find ones that match your curriculum? Have you tried to create video or board games for your classroom only to be overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort required just to produce them? If you answered yes to these questions, this web site is for you. This site contains downloadable games, game templates, and utilities that teachers and trainers can use to enhance any lesson.
Skoolbo is a site where elementary age students can practice literacy and numeracy skills. There is also a way for parents to sign up to receive free eBooks for their students. Parents or teachers must first create and account, then students are ready to roll.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games | Posted on June 7, 2012
Game On Online Learning New generations of learners require new methods of teaching. As computer and Internet use become more widespread among students of all ages, educators must be prepared to adapt to the needs of this interactive and innovative generation. Gaming provides an excellent alternative to traditional learning activities. Learners can engage in various subject material in a fun and competitive way.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games | Posted on June 7, 2012
Primary Games Arena has tons of free online games to keep those subject skills sharp.
Crayon Physics
What makes Crayon Physics so entertaining is that there are a number of different ways to solve each level, thanks to the fact that no one is going to draw the same things in exactly the same way. It requires players to be creative and solve each puzzle through whatever means they can conceive, as opposed to only having one convoluted method as the only solution.
You can download a demo version free but you must purchase the full version of the game.
Word Game Time
Word Game Time is your destination for the best language arts games and homework help
online. Our games are FREE, fun, trustworthy and approved by educators.
Word Game Time was created to help kids succeed. Our goal is to provide a fun educational playground for students in Kindergarten through 7th grade to excel in spelling, typing, reading, geography and language arts.
Cookie Learning Games for Kids
Great collection of online learning games for young children.
Gamestar Mechanic is a free online game creation program perfectly aligned to some STEM standards. Take a look at the video and explore the teacher resources. Looks like a great site for middle school.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Common Core, Games, Math Resources | Posted on February 29, 2012
Math Chimp.Com has more than 100 math games correlated with Common Core and organized by grade levels.
Wordia.Com
Wordia is a free games-based learning platform – built on the foundations of a dictionary – that blends word-based learning games with interactive video vocabulary.
Wordia encourages students to learn through play – building subject ‘Word Banks’ as they compete with classmates and other schools in a fun, competition-led, learning environment.
Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Early Learning, Games, Preschool | Posted on February 17, 2012
Fish Smarty.Com
Fish Smarty is an online educational portal for kids 3-9 years old. Explore, Play and Learn with the best educational software.
Play online or outdoor educational games, read comics and find activities like coloring, drawing and much more.