Games for Teachers
We don't have to tell you that fun classroom games are worth their weight in gold! Encouraging critical thinking, building social skills, and helping engage students with the curriculum? Yes, please. Get ready to bring game-based learning to your classroom with helpful printables, escape rooms, and more educational fun for elementary school students.
With a long list of benefits of learning games on hand, the teachers at Teach Starter have spent hours creating classroom card games, board games, scavenger hunts, and more that can help students build core competencies while having a whole lot of fun!
Game-based learning has gotten a lot of interest in recent years, but what exactly, is it? We know you've got a lot to do in your classroom and not a whole lot of time to do it, so our teacher team has put together a quick guide to gamification in education.
(Know all you need to know? Feel free to jump ahead to our printable and digital learning games!)
What Is Game-Based Learning?
In essence, game-based learning allows you to borrow from the gaming world to allow your students to engage with their lesson material in more dynamic ways. They can help improve student motivation and help students achieve learning objectives.
We like to think of it a bit like the parents who hide the broccoli inside the tasty hamburger. A little bit of gameplay helps the medicine — or core curriculum — go down!
Games aren't just fun, after all. They have failure baked into them, along with repetition, and the chance to accomplish goals along the way. Playing games in a classroom fosters many of those social and emotional learning skills, even when the topic at hand comes from the science curriculum or is focused on an ELA standard.
Why Are Classroom Games Good for Kids?
We hinted at some of the benefits earlier, but let's dig deep into the benefits of playing educational games in your classroom!
- They motivate students.
- Students develop critical thinking skills.
- They're student-centered.
- They build teamwork and leadership skills.
- Games encourage creativity and thinking outside of the box.
- They encourage students to challenge themselves.
- They improve student concentration.
Learning Games Ideas
Good teachers can make just about any lesson fun, but maybe you're looking for learning game ideas to mix things up. We thought you'd never ask!
Check out a few of our teacher team's favorite (and fun) ways to inject gameplay into your students' education:
- Digital escape rooms
- Card games
- Dominoes
- Active games
- Scavenger hunts
- Would you rather? games
- Bingo
- Board games
How to Use Games in the Classroom
Looking for a few fun ways to use games in the classroom? Our teacher team has a few quick ideas for you to try on for size!
- Play active games to help students get their wiggles out.
- Add a board game to your reading center or math center activities.
- Use flashcard-type or trivia games for material review.
- Explore new concepts in fun ways with games like 20 questions.
- Help students get to know one another at the beginning of a school year with teamwork games.
- Explore difficult concepts with skills-based games.
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Time by the Minute - 3rd Grade Math Interactive
Practice telling time by the minute with an interactive Time-telling digital learning activity.
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Roll to Create an Animal - Adaptations Activity
Roll to choose cool animal adaptations for a mystery animal using a fun dice game and report template.
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Thanksgiving Would You Rather? Game
Engage your students in thoughtful and hilarious discussions in an engaging, interactive game of Thanksgiving Would You Rather?
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Array Match-Up Activity for 3rd Grade
Challenge your students to create sets of arrays, multiplication facts and products with this matching game for 3rd grade.
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Environmental Factors That Affect Plants and Animals – Interactive Activity
Help your students learn about how environmental factors such as the weather affect plants and animals using this engaging and informative interactive activity.
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Roll and Round Dice Game
Help your student refine their rounding skills with this set of 7 printable math games.
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Kindergarten Counting 1-20 Matching Game
Use this matching game in your primary classroom to teach students to count quantities and match them to numbers (1-20).
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Addition and Subtraction Word Problems - Match Game
Practice reading, modeling, and solving addition and subtraction word problems with a matching activity.
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Food Chains - Interactive Activity
Review producers, consumers and decomposers in food chains with this interactive digital quiz.
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Frog Hop Suffixes - Interactive Grammar Review
Review knowledge of suffixes with a fun frog-themed Google Slides Interactive review activity.
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Prism Party! –Volume of Composite Rectangular Prisms – Google Slides Interactive Activity
Practice how to find the volume of composite figures with this interactive activity.
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Expanded Form Dominoes (5-Digit Numbers)
Use this set of dominoes when learning how to match 5-digit numbers written in standard form and expanded form.
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Continents and Oceans Roll and Color Game
Learn to identify the continents and oceans of the world with a Continents and Oceans Roll and Color Game.
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Google Interactive - Regions of the United States
Practice identifying states in the five regions of the United States with a Google Interactive activity.
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Back to School Icebreaker - Put a Finger Down Classroom Introduction Activity
Kick off a new school year with a “Put a Finger Down” Getting to Know You classroom icebreaker.
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Dressing Up A Sentence - Interactive or Printable Activity
Encourage students to add more descriptive language into their sentence writing with this activity.
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Fact and Opinion Sort - Interactive or Printable Activity
Practice differentiating between fact and opinion with this set of 24 sorting cards or a Google Slides Interactive activity.
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Feelings and Emotions Match-Up Activity
Help students to recognize and identify their feelings and emotions with this interactive match-up activity.
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Blending Phonemes Secret Message-Matching Activity
Blend phonemes to build words and uncover the secret message!
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Let's Research! Digital and Print Poster Project Templates
Conduct, organize, and display research about books, people, planets, animals, states, and countries with a versatile set of printable and digital poster templates.
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Google Interactive CVCC Word Building Activity
Practice building, reading, and writing words with consonants, vowels, blends, and digraphs while spelling CVCC words.
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Frog and Flies Match-Up Activity (Counting to 12)
Practice counting numbers 1 to 12 with this fun frog and fly match-up activity.
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The Wacky Professor's Treasure - Mini Escape Room Activity
A mini escape room activity that allows students to complete grammar tasks, while working together to solve a riddle!
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What Am I? – Music and Instruments
A fun game for students to identify various musical instruments and terminology.
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Memory Matcher PowerPoint – 3D Shapes
Recognize and recall the names of some of the most common 3D objects with a digital memory game!
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Order of Operations Dice Game
Practice order of operations with this set of 6 dice activity mats.
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Which Is Longer? – Interactive PowerPoint
An interactive PowerPoint quiz that asks students to compare the length and height of various everyday objects.
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Fishing to Know You
Get to know your new class at the beginning of the year with this Fishing to Know You activity.
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Roll it! Read it! Write it! Dolch Pre-Primer Sight Words
Practice reading and writing Dolch’s pre-primer high-frequency words with this board game for multiple players.
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The Mini-Olympics – Class Game
A fun, Olympic-themed competition you can have with your class.
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Fact Family Find and Flip - One- and Two-Digit Addition and Subtraction
Addition and subtraction game cards demonstrating the relationship between fact families.
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What's Remaining? - Long Division Board Game
A game to play to when learning to solve long division involving remainders.