Make a difference with your English language arts games
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It is thought that a quarter of the world’s population speak the English language at “a useful level,” and it is described as “the operating system for the global conversation” by the British Council. However, while a walk down any street located in one of the “core Anglosphere” countries will see you speaking nearly exclusively to native speakers, a casual poll of the average native speaker’s understanding of how English works: its finer semantic rules, grammatical peculiarities, etc., could prove to be a disappointing exercise, perhaps even more so for the questioned parties than the interviewer.
Like any subject, the deeper you study it, the more moving parts you find. In a subject like English language arts (ELA), the rules are not always the easiest to follow, with tricky elements like figurative language and exceptions to spelling rules being easy places to trip up. Flaws in someone’s early learning of such an important topic can have huge impacts on their future opportunities. By contrast, a good and comprehensive education in English language arts can send a child into the adult world fluent and persuasive in the international language of business and politics.
Following this goal, the nature of learning language arts is very well suited to gamification and learning games. As immersion and absorption in the language is required to learn it comprehensively, inviting your students to play a game can work on multiple levels. You can appeal to your students’ intrinsic motivations, like their desire for social interaction, their natural curiosity, and their need for challenges. All these mechanisms and more can be carefully harnessed through language games to complement their education.
What are English language arts?
The term English language arts, or English and language arts, is an American one. Where in the UK, the teaching of English would be just “English” in primary school and broken down in secondary schools to English literature and English language, in the US, English language arts as a subject is composed of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. English is taught under the language arts moniker in elementary schools and, with state and county variances which might have specific literature or language class options, right up to grade 12 (senior year).
Fundamentally, it can be a useful term for grouping the various elements comprising the study of English. Even towards the end of secondary school, where students start to have choices in the subjects they take, to be accepted to university to study any subject will require a minimum standard of English qualification.
The advantages of learning games
Gamifying English language arts learning isn’t a new phenomenon. As far back as 1995, the advent of widely accessible home PCs, Lil’ Howie the bear and Stinky the Skunk were inviting kids aboard the Alphabot to play Lil’ Howie’s Funhouse: The Great Word Adventure. The CD-ROM game had children playing multiple word games in their own leisure time, with the difficulty adjusting from play to play based on a child’s previous performance. It was so successful they even released a similar maths game the following year.
The modern classroom is full of video-game playing kids, children who are used to using screens and devices and consuming media in modern formats. You can harness these modern formats to cater to your students’ predilection for video games by customising your own educational games. While traditional quiet reading and essay writing are still necessary components of a curriculum, harnessing video-game elements in educational games can offer an effective method of meeting your students on their own turf. You can look at an educational video game as a modern vehicle by which to deliver learning objectives.
Additionally, using online educational games allows you to include every student in a game. Where learning games not involving video-game elements, one that might involve splitting the classroom into teams and having a quiz, or dividing into groups to solve a puzzle, would benefit the more confident children, it would allow less confident children, or those struggling with the topic, to hide and not participate. Introducing online educational games encourages all children to participate, and can give you feedback on how children are getting on, potentially highlighting any students who may need some extra help without the pressure or the work involved administering a test.
Top 3 tips to make you English language arts games more engaging
On the Drimify platform, you have the tools to quickly and easily customise online educational games. These are our top 3 tips for making them as effective as possible:
1. Plan carefully how you want your educational games to compliment your programme
Do you want your English language arts games to introduce new concepts ahead of lessons, or are you using them to allow your students to practise skills and reinforce concepts you’ve already covered? Are you creating them for a remedial class, or is this one aimed at all students?
At the simplest level, the Memory Cards Game could be incorporated to invite students to match a literary device with a short example of its usage, or instead of exact matches, you could use the format to teach kids about synonyms. A more versatile format like the Interactive Quiz could be used to gamify your language arts classroom on foundational concepts all the way up to very advanced subject matter.
Like any learning aid, an educational game’s specific purpose should be planned before creation. While the Drimify platform has a broad range of games that can be customised, not all will be suitable for language learning games, and some will prove more suitable than others to gamify specific topics.
2. Make them fun
Remember it’s a game to compliment and help expand your students’ understanding of what you’re teaching them. It needs to be fun and engaging to be effective. For example, adding elements of video, text, and animations to your games that deliver interesting information adjacent to English language arts, such as cultural origins, or even professional applications of ELA, can encourage students to think about their future careers.
Consider utilising our Dynamic Path™ to create a more immersive gamified learning path. It allows you to create different levels of interactive modules and content, and you can customise each level using Drimify’s entire catalogue of games. It also allows you to add a larger narrative as students would follow a pathway, which could be a useful aspect to harness from an ELA-perspective.
3. Be creative
The educational learning games you create don’t need to be anchored to the classroom. Drimify experiences are designed mobile-first, so any games you make with us will work on any modern device, be that a smartphone, a tablet, or a home computer.
Accessing the games could be through an email, or even by a QR code. You could incorporate learning games as part of homework assignments or revision aids, or you could even collaborate with a location for a field trip, creating games students can access through touch screen devices at specific locations, or by scanning QR codes with a tablet or smartphone for specific modules.
Make your language arts learning games the best they can be with expert advice
Making educational games to help students learn English language arts can be a powerful learning aid. They can engage a child’s interest and passion by approaching the subject in a novel way, and they can give you feedback on how much they’re learning, but like anything, a gamified approach needs to be executed in the right way to be effective. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with our gamification experts to discuss your project if you need any advice or help.
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