I chose the educational game SplashLearn, which provides a range of engaging activities for both math and literacy skills. It supports students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. SplashLearn helps early learners build foundational skills in a fun and interactive way, fostering a love for learning while ensuring they grasp essential concepts in mathematics and reading.
These pictures show different educational games for various age groups. The activities include letter tracing to help children learn to write, counting exercises that teach them to count to five, and sight word games to improve their reading skills. These fun resources support early childhood development by helping children engage and build essential skills.
The website provides educational resources within our lesson plans and activities. We focus on sight words every other day of the week. To enhance the learning experience, we can conclude each lesson with a fun game review. We can include a fill-in-the-blank activity to help students practice missing sight words. It's also important to highlight the letter sounds for each sight word to promote phonemic awareness and improve reading skills. This approach makes learning enjoyable and helps students comprehend sight words and their usage in reading. When learning mathematics, particularly foundational skills like addition, it's important to assess our understanding in engaging ways. Utilizing educational games can be an effective method for reinforcing these concepts. The website offers various interactive techniques that allow students to practice and check their knowledge. Integrating these games into our learning process will enhance students' comprehension and retention of mathematical skills, making learning enjoyable and effective.
To improve learning in my classroom, I find that using activities to assess our understanding after a lesson works best. Playing games after a lesson is an effective way to review the material. This is especially helpful for students under five, who often struggle to sit still for a long time. By adding short, interactive breaks between assignments, we can play educational games that strengthen our understanding of the content and boost cognitive development and critical thinking skills. This approach makes learning fun and active, helping young learners stay engaged and motivated. To effectively facilitate this learning experience in the classroom, it is essential to have a smart board that allows all students to engage with the material visually. By acquiring and setting up the smart board, we can enhance collaboration and interaction, ensuring that every student has the opportunity to participate fully in their education.
In the SplashLearn section, there is an assessment area that is crucial for tracking student progress. This feature allows me to pinpoint which students may need additional assistance. By observing their engagement with the games, I can evaluate their interactions and assess their ability to solve the problems presented. This approach enables us to provide personalized support, ensuring that each student can effectively develop their skills.
https://www.splashlearn.com/teacher/dashboard#curriculum_learning
Hi Emily! this looks like a really great source for the younger kids! I spoke on this in one of my discussion post comments, but the bright colors and images in and of themselves engage students so this game already has a few points in my book. Your points about the game being a great way to take breaks between larger concept lessons sounds like a great way to implement the use of gaming with a young age group.
ReplyDeleteI would be intrigued to see how my fifth graders who need reinforcing of these foundational skills would react to a game like this. I think they would enjoy it and would be beneficial for them although I do worry about other kids thinking that they're too "advanced" for this. It would definitely be trial and error usage. Thank you for sharing, Emily!
Hi Emily!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a really engaging and fun resource for younger kids trying to learn foundational skills. I still remember the workbooks we used to help trace letters and numbers being boring and bland, but this looks to be anything but that. I'd bet its super helpful to have built in assessments to be able to pinpoint where students need extra help. These skills are so crucially important, so being able to notice where each student struggles and needs more support is both helpful and impossible to do without a game or simulation tracking it for you. Resources like this make differentiation possible on levels that weren't before!
Hello Emily!
ReplyDeleteYou did an amazing job with your blog post! I completely agree with you, adding fun review games like the fill-in-the-blanks or sound recognition you mentioned is such a great strategy to reinforce learning while keeping students actively involved. Visual and hands-on learning can make a big difference, especially for younger students who learn best through play and movement. I wish we had done this when I was in elementary school because I am a visual learner, so this definitely would have helped me. These interactive methods not only keep students engaged but also help them retain information more effectively. I truly believe that when students can physically interact with the content, whether it's moving letters around or solving math problems on the board, it turns learning into something exciting. I know my students love it when we play games on the smart board!
Hi Emily
ReplyDeleteI loved your inclusion in the apps that help students get the basics of literacy. Too often do we overlook the basics as we progress. As a high school teacher, I find that penmanship is severely lacking in recent years. Students are typing more than they are writing, which is shown in their handwriting. We need to keep students working on their letters and the uniformity of each one. Using games after the lesson is essential, it creates a fun environment that students can use to review the objective for the day. These minigames often are able to be student paced which is an important aspect in education.