The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had many elementary schools and primary schools switch to virtual classrooms. The following second and third waves made it essential for elementary schools to continue online classes.
Thus, elementary schools are addressing a slew of challenges. Only to make the transition to virtual classrooms seamless.
Teachers are focussing on boosting the learning experience and learner engagement. So that students may acquire knowledge. Several studies suggest the effectiveness of gamification techniques in transforming virtual classrooms.
How Does Gamification Help?
By introducing Gamification or games and activities, Elementary schools can keep students
- excited
- interested
- engaged
- motivated
According to TrueEducationPartnerships.com,
“Gamification in learning involves using game-based elements such as point scoring, peer competition, teamwork, score tables to drive engagement, help students assimilate new information and test their knowledge. It can apply to school-based subjects, but is also used widely in self-teaching apps and courses, showing that the effects of gamification do not stop when we are adults.”
The new-age learning management systems (LMSs) and virtual classroom software help elementary schools gamify virtual classrooms. They provide popular gamification features like coins and badges.
Every elementary school can introduce various exciting virtual classroom games. Customizing these learning solutions is what it does.
Here’s where we come in
We gather information and ideas from various sources to help your school choose innovative virtual games and activities for elementary classrooms.
11 Virtual Classroom Games and Activities to Keep Students Engaged
1) Tell a Story
Storytelling is one of the activities that keep children excited and engaged in the digital age. It is easy to gamify the virtual elementary classes by creating opportunities for students to tell stories. Allow five minutes for the students to develop and tell stories based on a particular theme.
Ideas like– summer vacation activities or birthday gifts would do.
Positive side– The students will love to hear the crazy and hilarious stories told by their classmates.
2) Associate the Words
The virtual classroom game helps you to make students associate a particular work with a related word. Besides, it is a good way to keep students engaged. Plus, you can improve and expand their vocabulary through this activity.
How to Begin
- You can start the game by telling a word and asking them to relate it to another word.
- A student can tell any word that comes to his/her mind without thinking twice.
- You can make the students learn new words by choosing words related to topics – plants, animals, fruits, galaxies, and cities.
3) Draw based on a description
The entire class can take part in this exciting virtual classroom game. The activity requires students to draw an object using pen and pencil by listening to the description. You need to describe the object and ask the students to draw something based on a description. Every student can show the object drawn by her to classmates. You can reveal the object to make students know if they have guessed and drawn the object.
4) Play Virtual Pictionary
Definitions.net defines Pictionary as
“a guessing game in which players attempt to identify words from pictures drawn by other players.”
Pictionary is an excellent game to keep the students engaged. You can ask a student to illustrate a word while asking others to guess the word. You also have the option to divide the elementary class into two teams. The members of one team will guess based on the object drawn or illustrated by the opponent team member.
5) Act as UN Goodwill Ambassadors
Celebrities become UN goodwill ambassadors to be aware and educate people on important issues. You can gamify the online learning environment by making students act as UN goodwill ambassadors. You can ask every student to represent a specific country. The students can earn rewards by guessing which country the ambassador is representing. Also, this exciting game makes students aspire to become goodwill ambassadors.
6) Play Scattergories
Scattergories is a party game for promoting creative thinking.
According to Definitions.net,
“The objective of the 2-to-6-player game is to score points by uniquely naming objects within a set of categories, given an initial letter, within a time limit.”
You can start the virtual classroom game by preparing a list of categories and choosing a letter. The students need to tell words that start with the letter and belonging to a specific category. Besides making online learning fun, it helps foster creative thinking in the virtual classroom environment.
7) Interview Each Other
Some people consider interviewing a form of art, while others consider interviewing is a science. But each person has to put in both time and effort to become a smart interviewer. You can keep students excited and motivated in a virtual learning environment by making them act as journalists. The students can interview each other by asking a slew of fun questions. You can make it easier for students to interview each other by preparing and sharing a list of questions.
8) Do Karaoke
According to Collins Dictionary,
“Karaoke is a form of entertainment in which a machine plays the tunes of songs, and people take it in turns to sing the words.”
You can make the virtual elementary classes both exciting and entertaining by making students do karaoke. You can make the tunes of various songs played digitally and ask students to guess the song. Also, you must encourage students to lip-sync and complete the lyrics.
9) Plan Virtual Field Trips
You can transform the learning experience in a virtual classroom by leveraging the benefits of conventional field trips. The virtual field trips will not allow students to visit a specific place in person. But the students can gain hands-on experience by observing places and objects. The virtual field trips will keep the entire elementary class excited by cultivating discovery, observation, and keenness.
10) Write and Send Tweets
Twitter is currently one of the most popular social networking platforms. But many members find it challenging to wrap a message in 280 characters. You can keep students enthralled by making them compose and send tweets to themselves.
Every student gets to compose a tweet by writing something about himself in 280 characters.
11) Form Book Clubs
Transform the virtual classroom environment by motivating students to read books by forming book clubs. Instead of asking students to read a single book, ask them to read books related to a particular topic or subject. Importantly, reward the student who has read books or learned elaborately about a topic.
How To Unleash the True Potential of Virtual Learning
Mintbook’s Learning management system (LMS) and virtual classroom software developed come with native features to ease the gamification in virtual learning.
The elementary schools can leverage these native features to make students play a variety of games in virtual elementary classrooms.
At the same time, elementary schools can implement many exciting virtual classroom games and activities while customizing cloud-based e-learning solutions.
