Interactive games for study skills are a great strategy to support students’ learning objectives.
Game-based learning offers benefits to students at all levels, starting with preschool education and all the way up to secondary education. They help advance problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Research has found that digital game-based learning has a significant impact on student motivation too.
In addition, interactive games successfully prepare students for tests and assignments. They encourage participants to practice their collaboration and coordination skills. See some of the top interactive games for study skills below.
- Ranking Priorities
This is one of the most effective interactive games. Without priority-setting skills, no learning process can achieve its goals. Students who look for a high-quality essay service review know why ranking matters to identify a reliable and trustworthy online writing service.
Start by putting together a run-down of tasks and actions. The list can include both personal and study-related activities, such as specific assignments for different classes, social activities, sports activities, mundane tasks, and others.
Ask each participant to rank the items by assigning a degree of importance to each of them. This should help them rearrange the activities in the priority order. Follow up the exercise by a discussion on the process of priority-setting, letting the students provide the rationale for each ranking.
- Memorization Challenge
This game teaches participants organization skills, which are key to any learning process. You start playing by writing down assignments, which participants will need to prioritize while staying organized. Give students a list of actions they need to complete. For younger ones, limit the number of tasks to five; for older students, you can go up to ten.
Read the action out loud and ask students to do them from memory. Next time around, let participants write down the tasks. Toward the end, have a discussion about the difference between the two methods.
- Distracted Thinking
Distractions are a major barrier to effective learning for all students. Those who cannot deal with them are likely to compromise the quality of their education. It would also be challenging to make the most of educational games for students if you’re not able to concentrate while playing these games.
Play this game by asking participants to do a task twice, with and without distractions. The task can be about writing several sentences that you’ll ask a student to read out loud, followed by a brief Q&A session.
As the student writes and speaks, make a lot of background noise. Talk loudly, turn on a TV and turn up the volume, clap your hands from time to time, and start walking to and fro.
Go over the exercise again. This time do it without any distractions. Have a discussion with the students on how it felt on each occasion. Let them compare their feelings and reactions to the distractions and the way they tried to keep concentration.
- Question-Answer Cards
This game is played to go over all the study skills that have been taught. You need to use cards for the game.
Write your question about a study skill on one card and the answer to that question on another card. Write a second question on the other side of the first answer card. You should write the answer to the second question on a third card. Keep going to come up with a sufficient number of cards to allow all students to play.
Ask one of the students to read the first question. Invite the student with the answer to stand up and read the answer. Ask the same student to turn the card over and read the next question. Keep going until all questions and answers have been read out. Finish the game by asking the students if they still have any clarifying questions.
Concluding remarks
Interactive games are a great resource for advancing study skills. Many of such skills do not necessarily come naturally. That is why interactive games are used by tutors to develop students’ concentration, conceptual thinking, and memorization skills to achieve their learning objectives.