PuzzGrid - Play or create your own online word puzzles where you try to identify four sets of linked words and determine what they have in common.
Brain Boosters K-12
Reading and Writing - gr. 1-6 Paragraph correction, story prompts, card maker, figures of speech, ...
Semantris - Resource Link
SplashLearn - More Than Just Fun Math and ELA Practice K-5 At its core SplashLearn is a service that provides a free and ad-free environment in which students can review and practice their math and ELA skills. Students can use it in the web browsers on their computers or use the free SplashLearn mobile apps. The way that students access the SplashLearn games and other activities is through your free classroom account. Students then access SplashLearn by going to the link that you give them and then tap their avatars followed by the image that represents the class password. Alternatively, students can open SplashLearn then select "student" and enter the class code. Because your students access SplashLearn through the classroom account that you create, you can see their progress in your teacher dashboard. It's in your teacher dashboard that you can find standards-aligned math and ELA activities to assign to your students. Activities can be assigned to the whole class or to individual students within your class.The value of SplashLearn is found in the teacher dashboard. Specifically, the way in which you can find activities and assign them to your students as needed is where SplashLearn becomes valuable. Through that dashboard you can quickly find activities to help your students practice and strengthen their skills while also monitoring their progress. www.freetech4teachers.com
Reading EggsReading Eggs offers self-paced and easy to follow reading games, lessons and activities .To keep students motivated, lessons includes animations, songs, fun characters, and rewards.There are also over 3000 online books for kids each of which includes comprehension check questions. Also, Reading Eggs provides parents with access to 'detailed progress reports as well as hundreds of full-colour downloadable activity sheets that correspond with the lessons in the program.'
Plays.org K-4 Offers hundreds of games for students to play online. Students can play all of the games for free without the need to register or give away any personal details. And unlike many other online games websites, Plays.org doesn’t display advertisements and doesn’t use retargeting technology to track users across the web. Every game contains a summary of the game’s purpose, details about how to play the game, and strategies Every game page states who the target audience is for that game. Currently, to find games on Plays.org you can either scroll down through the entire catalog or click on links to game categories like math games or spelling games and then scroll through the list of games in that category. It’s a fine system, but down the road I’d love to see a few more options to refine your game search according to target age range (4-7, 8-11) and or skill (addition, subtraction). Take a look at short video overview www.freetech4teachers.com
Scientific and Information Literacy Developed Through Gameplay
Vital Signs is a story-based literacy game that has students take on the role of a medical director at a family clinic. Students contend with the daily challenges of a doctor: seeing patients, staying on top of community issues, and running an office. Along the way, students need to consult their to-do list with tasks to complete, including talking with staff to gather information, conducting research on medical conditions, interacting with the public, and making difficult decisions. The game has 12 episodes, each of which takes about 20 to 30 minutes to play through. Each episode empowers students to take on a realistic job role and act on their decisions while also dealing with the consequences. To help them along, students can check their cellphone, which has a to-do list, patient files, a medical handbook, and a glossary. Students build literacy skills all along, and an assessment at the end puts these skills to the test. Students must use their text analysis and research skills, as well as deductive reasoning, to solve problems and make decisions; they draft correspondences, such as letters, emails, handouts, memos, reports, summaries, and explanations of their medical decisions. Some assessments are instantly scored, while others are open ended and sent to the teacher dashboard for review.
Detective Verona gr 9-12 "Gain real-world information literacy in this fun mystery game from the University of Oklahoma's K20 Center! Designed for 9th to 12th graders, The Detective: Verona blends Digital Game Based Learning principles with the world of Romeo and Juliet transposed to the modern world. As the grandchild of the famous private investigator Giovanni Durano it's your turn to solve mysteries by collecting, evaluating and using information."
Teach Your Monster to Read is a fun game designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters and sounds. The game has eight levels (or islands as they're called in the game) each containing four activities. Students play the game as a friendly monster avatar.
Free Online Games Develop ESL Students' Language Skills
Winged Sandals - Greek Mythology, great for finding out interesting facts, images, pictures and games.
Pictionary Games
Headline Clues from Michigan State University is a great activity. In the game, you’re shown the lead paragraph, but letters from two words in the headline are missing. Players have to use clues in the first paragraph to identify what the missing words should be. As you play the online version, you can ask for clues. One of the great things about using this game is that students can create their own with pen and paper and have classmates try to figure out the answers, as well as giving them clues if needed.
Cause and Effect (gr 2-4) Match the cause and effects
FoldingStory Website FoldingStory is a group storytelling game. Sign up to enter the fold and contribute to stories or simply read some finished stories.
Detective Notebook (K-5) students think about what they are reading and to answer questions that require inferencing.
Playfic It is a online community where members can create, play, and share in text based games
Word Games - (gr K-1)
Just 2 Words is a fun free app where students solve for a two word phrase that matches a set of pictures. With different degrees of challenges
Wordia a vocabulary resource that I initially reviewed last year, recently underwent a facelift. The new Wordia is much more student-friendly than the previous version of the service. Wordia now features word lists arranged by subject area and the age of students. Wordia now offers games based on the words in the word lists. Students and teachers now have the option to create their own word lists and videos to upload to Wordia.
Autotopsy Webstie Autotopsy is an innovative digital experience that challenges you to play the part of forensic crash investigator in order to unpick the story behind a multi-vehicle pile up. Part game, part narrative experiment offering interactive video content alongside character case studies.
Kaboose Language Arts Games (gr 1-2)
The Great Gatsby Game A game based on the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzeragld
Wordmaster is from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.
Ad Game Examining advertisements
Murder Mysteries Suitable for: Grade 5 - Year 12
MysteryNet's Kids Mysteries ( gr 4 - 7) Solve mysteries, learn magic tricks.
Library Mystery Find sneaky, hard-to-discover clues! A series of interactive murder mysteries made available by PBS.
Dark Tales: Edgar Allen Poe Murder Mysteries gr. 5 - 12 A dreadful murder and kidnapping has occurred in the Rue Morgue and only you can solve the dark crime! Follow the clues to find the killer and the missing family. Become the apprentice of the famed C. Auguste Dupin and solve the devious puzzles to find the hidden clues that will lead you to the monstrous murderer. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s most acclaimed murder mystery, Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder in the Rue Morgue is a fantastic Hidden Object game full of suspense and excitement.
10 Grammar Game Sites
English: Lord of the Flies An interpretation of William Golding's book.
Grammar of Doom Use English grammar and vocabulary to get through the rooms of the mystical Temple of Doomed Grammar.
Spell City vocabulary and spelling. It allows educators to create word lists that they can integrate into games to help students improve their skills. Also, there are lots of teacher resources to enjoy such as: videos, worksheets, printables, and more.
Brain Boosters K-12
Reading and Writing - gr. 1-6 Paragraph correction, story prompts, card maker, figures of speech, ...
Semantris - Resource Link
- Semantris is one of my favorite tools from my "Hipster Google" session.
- Basically it is a vocabulary version of a Tetris game, where words fall down from the top and you can't let them reach the top line.
- To get rid of a word you have to type in a synonym or similar word. You are not allowed to use any of the actual words on the screen.
- This is a fun and effective way to improve vocabulary skills for your students (and for you!)
SplashLearn - More Than Just Fun Math and ELA Practice K-5 At its core SplashLearn is a service that provides a free and ad-free environment in which students can review and practice their math and ELA skills. Students can use it in the web browsers on their computers or use the free SplashLearn mobile apps. The way that students access the SplashLearn games and other activities is through your free classroom account. Students then access SplashLearn by going to the link that you give them and then tap their avatars followed by the image that represents the class password. Alternatively, students can open SplashLearn then select "student" and enter the class code. Because your students access SplashLearn through the classroom account that you create, you can see their progress in your teacher dashboard. It's in your teacher dashboard that you can find standards-aligned math and ELA activities to assign to your students. Activities can be assigned to the whole class or to individual students within your class.The value of SplashLearn is found in the teacher dashboard. Specifically, the way in which you can find activities and assign them to your students as needed is where SplashLearn becomes valuable. Through that dashboard you can quickly find activities to help your students practice and strengthen their skills while also monitoring their progress. www.freetech4teachers.com
Reading EggsReading Eggs offers self-paced and easy to follow reading games, lessons and activities .To keep students motivated, lessons includes animations, songs, fun characters, and rewards.There are also over 3000 online books for kids each of which includes comprehension check questions. Also, Reading Eggs provides parents with access to 'detailed progress reports as well as hundreds of full-colour downloadable activity sheets that correspond with the lessons in the program.'
Plays.org K-4 Offers hundreds of games for students to play online. Students can play all of the games for free without the need to register or give away any personal details. And unlike many other online games websites, Plays.org doesn’t display advertisements and doesn’t use retargeting technology to track users across the web. Every game contains a summary of the game’s purpose, details about how to play the game, and strategies Every game page states who the target audience is for that game. Currently, to find games on Plays.org you can either scroll down through the entire catalog or click on links to game categories like math games or spelling games and then scroll through the list of games in that category. It’s a fine system, but down the road I’d love to see a few more options to refine your game search according to target age range (4-7, 8-11) and or skill (addition, subtraction). Take a look at short video overview www.freetech4teachers.com
Scientific and Information Literacy Developed Through Gameplay
Vital Signs is a story-based literacy game that has students take on the role of a medical director at a family clinic. Students contend with the daily challenges of a doctor: seeing patients, staying on top of community issues, and running an office. Along the way, students need to consult their to-do list with tasks to complete, including talking with staff to gather information, conducting research on medical conditions, interacting with the public, and making difficult decisions. The game has 12 episodes, each of which takes about 20 to 30 minutes to play through. Each episode empowers students to take on a realistic job role and act on their decisions while also dealing with the consequences. To help them along, students can check their cellphone, which has a to-do list, patient files, a medical handbook, and a glossary. Students build literacy skills all along, and an assessment at the end puts these skills to the test. Students must use their text analysis and research skills, as well as deductive reasoning, to solve problems and make decisions; they draft correspondences, such as letters, emails, handouts, memos, reports, summaries, and explanations of their medical decisions. Some assessments are instantly scored, while others are open ended and sent to the teacher dashboard for review.
Detective Verona gr 9-12 "Gain real-world information literacy in this fun mystery game from the University of Oklahoma's K20 Center! Designed for 9th to 12th graders, The Detective: Verona blends Digital Game Based Learning principles with the world of Romeo and Juliet transposed to the modern world. As the grandchild of the famous private investigator Giovanni Durano it's your turn to solve mysteries by collecting, evaluating and using information."
Teach Your Monster to Read is a fun game designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters and sounds. The game has eight levels (or islands as they're called in the game) each containing four activities. Students play the game as a friendly monster avatar.
Free Online Games Develop ESL Students' Language Skills
Winged Sandals - Greek Mythology, great for finding out interesting facts, images, pictures and games.
Pictionary Games
- Drawpoly is a neat Pictionary-like online game where you can play with your friends and classmates. It would be great for ELLs.
- DrawGuess looks like a great online game for ELLs.
- Scattergories
- Geoscents is a new online Geography game.
- There are several Pictionary-like games on this list and they are all good. Skribbl, though, might be the easiest to play and quickest to understand. It would be nice regular addition to any ELL class and a fun occasional game for any other class to lighten things up.
Headline Clues from Michigan State University is a great activity. In the game, you’re shown the lead paragraph, but letters from two words in the headline are missing. Players have to use clues in the first paragraph to identify what the missing words should be. As you play the online version, you can ask for clues. One of the great things about using this game is that students can create their own with pen and paper and have classmates try to figure out the answers, as well as giving them clues if needed.
Cause and Effect (gr 2-4) Match the cause and effects
FoldingStory Website FoldingStory is a group storytelling game. Sign up to enter the fold and contribute to stories or simply read some finished stories.
Detective Notebook (K-5) students think about what they are reading and to answer questions that require inferencing.
Playfic It is a online community where members can create, play, and share in text based games
Word Games - (gr K-1)
Just 2 Words is a fun free app where students solve for a two word phrase that matches a set of pictures. With different degrees of challenges
Wordia a vocabulary resource that I initially reviewed last year, recently underwent a facelift. The new Wordia is much more student-friendly than the previous version of the service. Wordia now features word lists arranged by subject area and the age of students. Wordia now offers games based on the words in the word lists. Students and teachers now have the option to create their own word lists and videos to upload to Wordia.
Autotopsy Webstie Autotopsy is an innovative digital experience that challenges you to play the part of forensic crash investigator in order to unpick the story behind a multi-vehicle pile up. Part game, part narrative experiment offering interactive video content alongside character case studies.
Kaboose Language Arts Games (gr 1-2)
The Great Gatsby Game A game based on the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzeragld
Wordmaster is from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.
Ad Game Examining advertisements
Murder Mysteries Suitable for: Grade 5 - Year 12
MysteryNet's Kids Mysteries ( gr 4 - 7) Solve mysteries, learn magic tricks.
Library Mystery Find sneaky, hard-to-discover clues! A series of interactive murder mysteries made available by PBS.
Dark Tales: Edgar Allen Poe Murder Mysteries gr. 5 - 12 A dreadful murder and kidnapping has occurred in the Rue Morgue and only you can solve the dark crime! Follow the clues to find the killer and the missing family. Become the apprentice of the famed C. Auguste Dupin and solve the devious puzzles to find the hidden clues that will lead you to the monstrous murderer. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s most acclaimed murder mystery, Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder in the Rue Morgue is a fantastic Hidden Object game full of suspense and excitement.
10 Grammar Game Sites
English: Lord of the Flies An interpretation of William Golding's book.
Grammar of Doom Use English grammar and vocabulary to get through the rooms of the mystical Temple of Doomed Grammar.
Spell City vocabulary and spelling. It allows educators to create word lists that they can integrate into games to help students improve their skills. Also, there are lots of teacher resources to enjoy such as: videos, worksheets, printables, and more.