The Teachers' Lounge

Hello everyone!

I've been subbing in a junior high/high school for the past couple of months and was tasked with having to teach a class about growth mindset to a group of ESL learners. I brought my Switch with me and decided to introduce the students to Celeste. I talked about how sometimes it can be difficult for us to overcome challenges and the students shared stories of when they overcame obstacles in their lives. I then showed them the game and let them take turns playing for a while. One student took a good 5 minutes trying to figure out one screen of the first stage, then accidentally reset the level and proceeded to fly through the section he had just struggled through. We then talked about how it took him 5 minutes initially to figure out how to get through that part, but with his practice and knowledge, he could now do it with ease. We talked about how this could be applied to school and to other aspects of our lives. It was a great class and we all had a blast!

I look forward to exploring more of what this site has to offer, thank you!

I am a high school Family and Consumer Sciences teacher. I am currently teaching Customer Service (a vocational course). I had considered bringing in my Nintendo switch to have my students play Overcooked during the "teamwork/leadership" lesson for when I teach employability skills. 4 players at a time can work together to create the customers' orders before time is up. However, that is without the COVID considerations and I am teaching hybrid classes (some virtual, some on-campus) so that wouldn't really work.

Are there any other free to play (not requiring download) online games that my students could play together to practice teamwork/leadership skills?

I recently retired from 50 years in the EFL/ESL field, focusing largely on helping to make authentic content accessible to English learners. I worked more than 20 years with the Bangkok Post newspaper doing daily lessons on the latest news.

My son is a gamer, however, I became fascinated with how he was able to play with gamers throughout the world. Unlike the newspaper, this was real-time use of unscripted English and I began to study the language typically needed to join in the most popular games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Apex Legends, etc. .

The result is Real English for Gamers

https://realenglishforgamers.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvRkPfGnOm_lxAr7SyWBJ8g

I’m a 4th grade teacher in Indianapolis, IN. I taught the lesson with Kind Words and I really loved it. I flipped through and chose some requests they would respond to while they were at recess so that I could guide why we were writing a bit. They gave really positive and supportive feedback that made me really happy to read. I had students submit their requests in writing and I typed them up that night. I sifted through the responses to them during lunch. They were all really kind, but some of the responses had assumed the requester was an adult and gave advice that wouldn‘t have been helpful to a 10 year old. The kids really opened up and were really excited to find other students who were struggling with similar issues and to receive kindness from strangers.

Thanks for the great ideas! This is also now of my favorite games to chill out with at home, so bonus!

Sounds like you could totally make a lesson around that game. What age are the students? If they are adolescents, the analysis of swearing, when to use it, why, why not, what it means, how it changes the meaning of a sentence, feelings... etc... could be turned into a lesson itself.

Hello everyone!

@James York You have an excellent point! Fun doesn't always equal to learning. After reading your post, I went back to look for some other games and tried to see how I could apply them to, if not English as a language, then at least to one of the skills, such as listening or speaking.

One of the games I thought useful and engaging is called Unheard, a short enough detective game that has the player solving cases via an audio record and the player moving around the map to listen to different people's conversations. To help the students exercise listening skills and making inferences, we usually have an audio file and then just to test if the students were listening, we would ask them questions they would then have to write down.

However, Unheard is slightly different as it gives students the choice to move around the rooms they want to go to and whose conversation they want to hear. Then, regarding the information they have, they have to make inferences to identify the speakers and answer two or three questions that have to do with the particular cases.

There is one drawback, though. The foul language. The game, to keep their characters intact and to show diversity in their personalities, profanities are used in this, albeit not too many, but still...

So now I'm back to finding more and other games to apply in the classroom.

Hi Sarah,

Just chiming in with some questions back at you to try and focus your thinking around game use:

I can see that you have identified some "fun" games that you'd like to use. So, can I assume that you are thinking of using the games for affective (motivational) reasons only? What can students learn through the use of those games? Or, what would you like to teach with those games? What specific skills?

Another key question is: What do you as a teacher plan to do around the game play sessions? Playing the game is going to be fun for students, I'm sure, but as you probably know already: fun does not equal learning. I think @Zack has some fine examples of how he incorporates non-gameplay pre and post activities to hone students into specific skills.

Could you perhaps come up with a quick lesson plan around one of the games? Then we could help guide you further.

Hope these questions aid your thinking.

James

I hundred percent agree with you. I really would like to work in a school that lets me design my own lesson plans without putting limitations on it.

There was a time I was forced to teach a whole class of boys Little Women and it was extremely frustrating. The only way I was able to keep their interest was by giving them excerpts of the important or meaningful lines in the book and placing them in order as we listened and read the book. Afterwards, I had them draw out their favourite scenes from the chapters.

The thing is my school urges us to teach English ONLY as a language. Our department head doesn't seem to understand that teaching English Language arts is also very important because it helps the students develop writing skills and it helps them to decide which genre they would like to explore.

Hello!

I'm an English teacher from Pakistan and I'm pretty new to using video games to teach English concepts. I just wanted some feedback regarding these two games I thought would be really helpful in teaching some concepts.

So, I have had to host a few spelling bees in the past and my students complain about how dull it can get to spell. So, I remembered this game I played once called Epistory: a Typing Chronicles which is about a girl who's trying to fix her homeland. As you traverse through this gorgeous adventure, you are faced with enemies with words above them and you have to type to destroy them.

The second game I came across was called Killer Frequency, where an RJ has to help three callers escape a murderer. I thought this was a really neat game to explore to teaching skills such as the importance of future planning and decision making. However, I'm not sure how I can incorporate English skills into this. I'm still thinking about it.

I really would like some feedback and it would be lovely to have a discussion with anyone who would want to have one.

Thanks a lot for your time!