When we think of games, we often imagine fun, laughs, and maybe even a bit of competition. But when we bring those elements into the classroom, something interesting happens: learning starts to feel a lot less like work and a lot more like play. That’s the beauty of gamification in education — using fun in order to reach the ultimate goal of learning.
In my own English classrooms (with kids aged from 6 to 14), gamification has become almost ubiquitous. From vocabulary challenges made on Wordwall, puzzles and handouts on Lieworksheets, or playing Kahoot quizzes on our interactive board, the goal is the same: to keep students involved.
What gamification means
Gamification makes normal classroom routine become a little bit more exciting. Using points, badges, team names, avatars etc. are just a few examples.
According to Kapp (2012) in The Gamification of Learning and Instruction, gamification deals with learners’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. By setting clear goals and offering immediate feedback, we motivate students to participate more actively in tasks that they might normally find not fulfilling enough.
My „Gamification Collection”: What I use and why
In the up-coming autumn, I am starting my fourth year of teaching. What I have learned in the first years of teaching might not come as a surprise to my fellow teachers: students are often unmotivated. I have found, therefore, classrooms full of bored students and teachers’s rooms full of capable individuals trying to shake their students back to reality. I have learned, from my own experience and from the precious stories shared by my colleagues, that gamification can ignite the spark of motivation and energy back in our students’s minds. Through this challenging but beautiful process I have discovered a series of really good digital instruments that have become standard procedure during my lessons, so much so that my pupils expect them during the classes. Here is a list of what I love using the most:
- Liveworksheets
Interactive worksheets that give my students immediate feedback. They love dragging and dropping answers or even using their voices for pronunciation exercises. It feels like a game, but actually, we’re practicing grammar, spelling, or listening skills and they don’t have to wait at all in order to receive their marks.
Wordwall
This is a personal favorite! Children love seeing their scores on the screen. What I like most about it is the fact that you can copy and modify another teacher’s work in order to make it relevant to your own lesson, but it is also easy and quick to make your own little games (my favourite is the Russian roulette template – I personally use it for questions after reading a text or even as an ice-breaker to introduce a new topic).
- ISLCollective
ISLCollective has got a special spot in my heart, because it works wonderfully for students of all ages (and because it is free to use). Here, you can upload YouTube videos and add questions. The video pauses, the question pops up, the students answer and immediately get feedback. In three years of using it, not once have I had a child lose their attention during a video.
Kahoots & Blookets
I design my own quizzes on both platforms. The thrill of competing (politely!) against classmates while answering questions makes even grammar feel exciting. In Blooket, the quizzes can also take mini-game forms; for example, the students have to tend to a café and in order to buy supplies for their customers they have to answer correctly to the questions given.
- Padlets
Sometimes, learning is a big collaboration in my classes. I use Padlets to collect students’ ideas, brainstorms, and responses. It’s our digital board and the students love seeing what the others are answering! I’ve made classic games, like imagining to be stuck on a deserted island, into a Padlet form. Seeing their funny and witty answers makes me, the teacher, be confident that they are paying attention to the topic and actually envisioning themselves on the island but it also makes them aware of the others’ answers.
Why it works
Research backs up what I see in my class: gamified learning works. In a review by Deterding et al. (2011), they found that game-like elements in the classroom translates to increased participation, longer attention spans, and better memorization.
Gamification gives students a sense of autonomy, progress, and reward. They choose their answers, level up through activities, and see their effort turn into visible achievements. That sense of progress can be especially powerful for kids who struggle with traditional learning methods.
Also, let’s not underestimate the power of fun. A playful classroom is a happier one. When students enjoy what they’re doing, they’re more likely to come back the next day with curiosity and confidence.
Challenges (Because let’s be real…there are always challenges)
Of course, gamification is not like snapping your fingers. Not every instrument works for every lesson. I have modified, many times, a perfectly good resource just because it didn’t fit the level of a new generation of students. They are also usually pretty fast-paced activities, which does not really work for kids who work in a slower manner.
That is why balance also matters a lot. I try to place gamified instruments between more traditional activities (after having read a new text, at the end of a unit, in the middle of a grammar lesson, etc.) because even when you are playing a game, you either need some queiter moments or to pause it from time to time.
We also have to take into consideration the time factor. Building online resources is not always convenient, fast or easy. I believe, therefore, based on my own findings, that gamifying your lessons takes time and dedication – at least until you manage to build a good collection of instruments which you can use and reuse as many times as you like.
Another challenge arises with the fact that many of the platforms and apps available to us teachers are not always friendly with our wallets since most of them demand subsciption fees.
Final thoughts
Finally, gamification becomes easy and fruitful after lots of work from the teacher, but which beautiful things do not require us to dedicate some sweat (and perhaps frustrated tears) in order to be achieved? I believe that a well-made digital instrument can become a chance to make students realise that during English lesson, everyone becomes a winner.
Bibliography
• Kapp, K. M. (2012). The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-Based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education. Pfeiffer.
• Gee, J. P. (2007). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining “Gamification”. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (pp. 9–15).