Challenge: Play a Game on Arcademic Skill Builders
Arcademic Skill Builders is an awesome, fun website where you can find arcade-style educational games. The use of gaming in education (think BrainPOP’s GameUp and Globarloria) is becoming widespread. This website provides a great option for the elementary classroom because it is user-friendly, engaging and effective. Arcademic Skill Builders is free and your students can get on and start playing right now by simply going to this website: http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/.
Several features of Arcademic Skill Builders are available to assist teachers. Although not required, there is an option to create a user account and there are some benefits to this. For example, you can easily create student usernames and passwords, assign games, and track student performance. Also, you can search through the games by grade level or subject area. Although most of the games are focused on math concepts, there are games related to Language Arts, Geography, and Typing.
To get started, find a game, click on it, then click play. This will bring you to an overview of the game with directions about how to play. Since many of the games are multiplayer students can either select to play a public or private game. (If they select private this means that they can enter a password and play only with users that they share this password with. Aracdemic Builders is safe and secure, and perfect for your students! You can read more about Aracdemic Skill Builders note on Student Safety here).
Some ideas for integration:
Play a game whole group on the SmartBoard (if available)
Incorporate a game into centers
Reward students with game time
Indoor recess on a rainy day
Also, you can get the Arcademic Skill Builder App for iPad or on the Andriod Market!
How to Accomplish this Challenge Item:
1. Visit Arcademic Skill Builders
2. Find a relevant game to play with your class
3. Play the game
4. Comment on this post (Which game did you play? How did you organize this task? What device did you use to play the game? Was it effective?)
Thank you for reading this post! If you have any questions about Arcademic Skill Builders, please comment on this post, or email me at [email protected]. Remember to comment (anytime this month) for a chance to win an iPad2 and other great prizes!