Why Should We Use Games in the Classroom?The Importance of Game Based Learning Modern Day Education

When teaching in a primary classroom, games should be incorporated not only into the daily lessons we teach, but also our classroom management strategies. Playing games are associated with having fun and students are more likely to enjoy learning and become more engaged. It’s a wonderful way for taught content to be reinforced whilst boosting class positivity and collaboration.

In this article, we share 5 benefits of playing games in the classroom:

1. Increased Motivation:

Engaging in classroom games increases student motivation. Through the conduit of playing games, students are more stimulated and encouraged to learn, pay attention and participate in specific tasks. Games are wonderful because they help students to work together in a team whilst also taking responsibility for their own education. This increased motivation also applies to improved behaviour in the classroom, games can bring the whole class together to demonstrate good manners and work harder.

2. A Little Healthy Competition:

It’s natural for students to become a little competitive in the classroom. Children who take part in competition learn important social skills through interacting with others. Games are a fantastic way to control competitiveness between peers because there are instructions and rules that all players must follow. Through the use of games in the classroom, students may compete against each other when they play a game, then later support each other during other complementary learning activities.

3. Improves Memory

When students play a variety of content-specific activities, it can boost their memory. During game time, children must recall important details about a topic that have previously learnt whilst also using their working memory to think and take actions at a fast pace! Sometimes its games that are created by the children themselves that end up being the most effective, this is because during their construction of a game they must use their memory of specific content to create questions and answers that are relevant for the fame. Therefore, it’s great to encourage children to get creative and come up with their own!

4. New Knowledge

Games are the perfect way to consolidate new knowledge in the classroom. They can be given to students after teaching new information to the class. This will consolidate and strengthen their understandings as they make connections about what they have learnt with what they already know. Games can be a great tool for developing skills in reading, math, technology, problem-solving and much more! Games are really versatile and adaptable to a variety of subjects and student’s needs.

5. Teamwork and Cooperation with Others

Playing classroom games are great because they can be used as team-building exercises through problem solving, listening and organising skills. This in turn, increases class cooperation and strengthens bonds between students. An effective way of doing this is making children work together in teams when they play a whole class game against another class or even their teacher. Through teamwork students learn how to share turns, build respect and play in a fair manner.

What games can we play to teach specific skills? (Snakes and Ladders)

Here are a few classroom resources that are handy for incorporating games into your lessons. They include English teaching resources that help improve reading in younger primary school years as well as other subject areas. All of these materials can be downloaded instantly from the Resources for Teaching Website (https://resourcesforteaching.com.au), if you’ve been searching for useful websites for teachers, you should definitely check them out!

Snakes and Ladders Digraph Games

Learning how to read words with digraphs can be tricky for young students, this resource is perfect for kindergarten and Year 1 students who can improve their abilities to read common words with blends! It includes a variety of Snakes and Ladders that focus on particular digraph groups, each type of blend is colour coded for students to make connections between the same sounds in different words. Each game has a range of different words for students to practice reading and is great for literacy rotations!

Whole Class Reward Mazes and Tickets

These dazzling mazes are a great behaviour management tool which encourages students to work cooperatively to earn whole class rewards! Students begin at the start and colour in a box every time they show good behaviour. When students reach the star they earn the reward in the coloured star or in version 2 they pull a reward ticket. The reward tickets are great because teachers can filter through and use the ones they like.

The author is a writer who often publishes articles on health and education for their readers online. She also manages a website that offers a range of teaching resources online. Visit https://resourcesforteaching.com.au/ for more information.

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