There are many ways to bring the principles of Gamification into the classroom without actual video games. Here are five ways I have gamified my classroom. Each of these learning experiences was highly engaging and effective in motivating students to learn.
1. Digital “Escape Rooms”
These provide great opportunities for collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving. You can build your own or use ready-made ones online.
There are also many other platforms to find them on online. I made my own using Google Forms, this is relatively easy to do. You give students a clue to solve and they have to type the correct answer into the Google Form before moving on. My Year 4 class loved code-breaker clues the best.
2. Choose Your Own Adventure
I have created these using both Google Forms and Google Slides. Google Slides is slightly more straightforward. Here is a Choose Your Own Holiday example I created.
Using Google Forms, you can prompt students top write their own Choose Your Own Adventure Story with this Choose Your Own Adventure Writing Game. I found this to be particularly engaging for reluctant writers!
Here is a ‘how to’ document by Eric Curts.
3. Desmos Card Sort
I’ve used these to get information about students’ understanding of Science concepts. Students can sort numbers, words and pictures into different categories to show their understanding. This worked really well for solids, liquids and gases as well as living and non-living. The anonymous function allows you to go through and discuss incorrect responses and students can re-do the assessment to show improvement.
Website
Creating a Card Sort – Step by Step
4. Minecraft for Education
It’s no secret that students love Minecraft, however, it can be an extremely useful tool in the classroom.
As well as using the platform to have students collaborate and problem solve together, it is a great way for early primary students to demonstrate their understanding of mathematical language. I have had my students design obstacle courses where the player must move ‘over, under, left, right and so on’. We have created shapes with specific lengths, heights and width as well as calculating the volume of the shapes.
Minecraft is now free for all public school students and runs on all platforms (PC, Mac, iPad, Android). Visit: https://education.minecraft.net/ The website also includes a huge amount of support and resources to get you started.
5. Kahoot
An old favourite – students love Kahoots! I started doing this three years ago as a warm up activity to engage my students in Fractions. I have also had students create their own Kahoots to revise concepts we have learned in Mathematics. We then do them as a whole class. I recently created a fun end of year Kahoot to reflect on the projects we did and things we learned in 2018. Website: https://kahoot.com/
Other Gamification Platforms
- Class Craft Game: https://www.classcraft.com/
- Alludo Learning: https://www.alludolearning.com/
- Fog Stone Isle https://fogstoneisle.com/
The Maker Difference 