Posted by jenmalonetn | Posted in Games, Gamification, Social Studies Resources | Posted on March 25, 2019
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.