Learning Center Archives - Read to Lead

Review Games To Make Test Prep Fun

Read to Lead Team — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 15:41:22 +0000

Testing prep time can feel like a chore and a real drag – not just to middle schoolers, but to teachers too! Why not switch it up? Turn test prep into a time that students enjoy while reviewing important topics and concepts by bringing an element of fun into your classroom!

Here are some of our favorite ideas to create a game show type of environment, get students out of their seats, or just make learning fun and enjoyable again!

Craft Review Games

Jeopardy

Bring the classic game show into your classroom with Test Prep Jeopardy! You may think this game requires lots of pre-class prep work but it can be as simple or intricate as you like. Yes, you’ll need to set up some type of game board using a whiteboard, blackboard, smartboard, GoogleSlides, or Pear Deck but beyond that, it’s up to you. Simply choose categories based on the topics you want to review and have a list of questions and answers for each level of points.

When it’s time to play, divide the class into four teams. Each team member takes a turn to select a category and amount, for example, “Poetry for $400”. If the student answers the question correctly, the team earns points. At the end of the game, tally up the points to determine the winner!

Knockout!

Bring a Carnival element to your classroom with this fun game board. Getting the game board setup requires some prep and crafting, but you can re-use it for years! Use hot glue to stick plastic cups in a grid format on a piece of foam board. Be sure to leave some space between the rims! While the glue is drying, prepare slips of paper with review questions and small prizes. Once the glue is dry, place one slip of paper and a prize into each cup and cover it with a piece of tissue paper. Secure the tissue paper with rubber bands.

To play, ask students to come up one at a time and select a cup. Have them punch through the tissue paper to retrieve the question and prize. To keep the prize, they will have to answer the question correctly. Otherwise, the first student to raise their hand and give the correct answer claims the prize for themselves! (limit 2 per student).

Credit Composition Classroom

Tap into Apps and Digital Platforms

Quizizz

Access a customizable content library to quickly create interactive assessments and engaging quizzes to test students’ knowledge. Motivate students while easing the stress of testing with this enjoyable gamified platform that also gives you real-time data about student performance so you can offer support when needed.

Kahoot!

Choose from 100+ million ready-to-play games or create your own on this game-based classroom response system. Kahoot! allows all students to review contents and tests their understanding simultaneously. Project the multiple-choice questions on the screen and have students answer them on their individual devices. With games for every grade in every subject, getting through test prep with your students will be a breeze.

Flip (Formerly Flipgrid)

If your students love sharing videos with each other, they will love Flip! A free app by Microsoft for video discussion and sharing, you can use Flip to get students to review different topics ahead of testing season. By giving them the chance to showcase their creativity, you keep things fun while ensuring students understand the material being reviewed.

Get Students Out of Their Chairs

Pass the Chicken

Bring a rubber chicken into your classroom for this test-prep game! Arrange your students so they are seated in a circle. Randomly select a student and give them the rubber chicken to pass around the circle. Ask this student a test review question and they will have as long as it takes for the chicken to make its way around the whole circle to answer. If they do not manage to answer in time, they have to sit in the middle of the circle (the chicken coop).

The game continues as you ask different students questions. If they don’t know the answer, they may ask the student(s) in the chicken coop for help. If a student in the chicken coop answers a question correctly, they get to rejoin the circle. Consider creating safety rules with this game, as students can get quite rowdy with the rubber chicken!

Snowball Fight

Recreate a snowball fight inside the classroom! For this game, each student writes three review sentences or questions on individual pieces of paper and then balls up the pieces of paper to create snowballs. Divide students up into smaller groups or teams and have them stand together.

For the snowball fight, students take turns throwing their snowballs at members of opposing teams. The student who is hit by the snowball has to answer that question correctly to remain in the game. If they answer wrongly, they are out. The game continues until all the snowballs are used up and/or there is only one team left standing.

Around the World

Travel the world with test prep with this game! The aim of the game is for a student to travel around the room and arrive back at their seat. Start by having one student stand up next to a seated student. Ask the pair of them a test review question and the one who answers correctly first gets to move up to the next “point on the map” while the other sits down. Continue in this manner until the timer runs out or you complete the list of review questions. The winner is the student who has moved the farthest from their original seat!

Consider incorporating “mandatory layovers” for students who have answered a set number of questions correctly (3-5) in a row by making them sit down to give other students a chance to move.

Test prep time can be a fun and engaging experience for your students with these interactive activities! Looking for more test prep ideas for your middle school students? Check out these resources:

3 Review Games to Help Your Middle School Students Prepare for Testing

5 Popular Test Review Games For Middle Schoolers

December ELA Activities to Keep Students Engaged

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Re-Building Classroom Community at the End of the School Year

Read to Lead Team — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 13:20:36 +0000

We often focus on building classroom community in the beginning of the school year. We’re intentional about setting goals, expectations, and norms – but after months of learning together, and navigating standardized testing in March and April, we’re seeing a need to re-build class culture at the end of the school year too. But how do you reset and re-engage? Keep reading!

Get Back To Classroom Routines

Regular classroom routines may have taken a backseat in light of testing season, but now is the perfect time to bring them back. Classroom routines have many benefits, such as giving students a roadmap for their daily activities and helping them stay focused by reducing uncertainty. Routines also help foster community among students and encourage them to see themselves as part of the group, rather than just as individual students.

If you need some quick ideas to infuse life into your classroom routines, we’ve got you covered. Try assigning a Read to Lead Playlist! Perfect for morning work before lessons start for the day, early finisher activities, or even extra credit. Read to Lead’s learning games promote literacy and leadership skills within an immersive, game-based platform. The best part? Once students try Read to Lead’s games once, they’ll be eager to play again and again, making it the ideal tool to reinstate routine in your middle school classroom!

Set Short-Term Classroom Goals

What better way to rebuild classroom culture than by giving students a common goal to work towards? Even though there are just a few short weeks left before school is out for summer, setting short-term classroom goals for students to work towards collectively can give them a real boost of motivation!

One easy way to bring the class together and rebuild community is by setting a “Words Read” goal for Read to Lead. As students complete each learning game, their “words read” count gets added to a running tally for the class which shows how many words they have read altogether. Another option is to make it a challenge for students to play at least one Read to Lead learning game each week before summer. Set up a chart in your classroom for students to track their progress and reward them when they hit their goals. Or, if your class has been participating in the Million Words Reach Challenge, use the leaderboard to inspire confidence and healthy competition in your class. Whatever you and your students decide, Read to Lead’s games are sure to add some excitement to the classroom!

Build Students’ Social Emotional Skills

For students, wrapping up the school year can bring with it some big emotions. Relief at having “done their job” the entire school year, stress about their results from their standardized tests, excitement at having time off to relax, sadness at not seeing their friends over summer holidays, and even a worry of food scarcity as school is their one, daily “hot meal”for some students.

Help your students learn healthy ways to manage stress, and give them an opportunity to practice self-management and awareness skills with CASEL-aligned learning games on the Read to Lead platform. By building SEL skills like social and self-awareness, self-management, relationship and communication skills, and responsible decision-making, Read to Lead games help our middle schoolers thrive both in and out of school.

Wondering just how well your students are grasping SEL skills? Check out the inbuilt SEL dashboard! It provides actionable, real-time data to help you understand your students’ SEL skill development and differentiate instruction and support accordingly.

In a student’s academic experience, the end of the school year is just as important as the start. Incorporating Read to Lead’s games into your classroom can help end the year off on a high by helping students regain a sense of community and camaraderie with their classmates. What’s more, Read to Lead is FREE for educators! Sign up today to get started!

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Teaching Literacy Across the Curriculum

Read to Lead Team — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 20:09:55 +0000

Literacy is the foundation of all learning. Being able to read, understand what you are reading, and apply background knowledge to new situations is essential to be able to learn any subject, from mathematics to science, from geography to computing, and everything in between. These are fundamental skills that, once acquired, will open up the doors of opportunity.

But what is the best way to teach literacy in the modern-day classroom and who is responsible for teaching literacy? HINT: it’s not just ELA teachers! In this article, we’re exploring what literacy is and how educators can teach literacy across the curriculum, regardless of what subject you’re teaching!

“Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy.” – Barack Obama

Simply put, literacy is the ability to read, write, listen, and speak in a way that allows us to communicate effectively with others. In our modern world, it is indispensable and vital for navigating even the most basic tasks in daily life. Research has also shown that reading, a key element of literacy, is a strong predictor of success later in life, whether in terms of pursuing higher education, getting high-income jobs, or being better socially adapted.

Here’s a few of our favorite tips to help build students’ literacy skills regardless of the subject you’re teaching:

#1: Start with Building Background Knowledge

When you think of a window, do you think of it as a pane of glass with shutters to allow wind and light to flowthrough, or as something that exists as a part of a house? For most people, our minds would immediately jump to the second. Why? Because context is everything.

No matter the subject area that you teach, help students contextualize new information by building on their background knowledge. Consider – What are students already familiar with? How can this new information be connected to the knowledge they already have?

Knowledge and comprehension are closely related – each reinforces the other. Students learn new knowledge which they then use to comprehend or understand information. Understanding something within a new context helps them concretize this information within their existing knowledge paradigm, and adds to it. From this perspective, giving students background knowledge to information they need to learn is key to teaching literacy.

#2: Build Real-World Connections

If literacy is important in preparing students for the real world, what better way to do that than by demonstrating to them its relevance to the real world? Too often, students get lost in the barrage of information they get at school, particularly when they cannot see how it relates to their daily lives or how they can apply it to their future careers. This makes them disengaged and unmotivated, making it difficult to build their literacy skills.Read to Lead’s learning games addresses this by building real-world connections for students to see exactly how what they learn applies to life. For example, in the series Community in Crisis, students take on the role of Director at their local community center to respond to the effects of a hurricane in the community. Students can draw parallels between their in-game experiences with real-world contexts like Hurricane Harvey (2017) and Superstorm Sandy (2012). By inviting students to be the “boss” in a virtual workplace, we can connect literacy skills to real-life applications.

#3: Check Comprehension Skills As You Go

One way to teach literacy regardless of your subject matter is to check students’ comprehension skills. Getting regular feedback about how students are progressing, where they need a little extra help, and whether they are truly understanding the material is invaluable to building their literacy skills. However, juggling all of that for an entire classroom of students can be challenging.

That’s where Read to Lead comes in. With real-time reporting that shows exactly how each student is faring in each learning game and which areas they struggle with, Read to Lead provides invaluable information that you can use to provide students with more support. Each interactive learning game also comes with wrap-around curricula in the form of post-game debate questions and discussion prompts to deepen students’ understanding and solidify their grasp of the material. These additional resources not only reinforce reading comprehension and boost students’ literacy skills but also promote thoughtful reflection about the material covered.

By using these three tips in your classroom, you’ll be helping cultivate students’ literacy skills and equipping them to be the next generation of readers and leaders! How do you teach literacy across your curriculum?

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4 Ways to Support English Language Learners

Read to Lead Team — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 18:18:44 +0000

In 2020, an estimated 4.9 million children in the US education system were English Language Learners. These students often come from non-English-speaking backgrounds and often need additional support in English and other academic courses. Yet teachers aren’t often given specialized training to prepare them to work with these students.

At Read to Lead, we’re educators too, and we’re all about helping other educators. That’s why we’re sharing four ways to better support the English Language Learners in your classroom!

Create Class Routines

For students whose first language isn’t English, simply getting through the school day can be a challenge. Following instructions, getting ready for lessons, even just figuring out the timetable can be bewildering for English Language Learners. Having daily routines for your students to follow consistently can help reduce the mental stress and overwhelm they may otherwise experience.

Need some tips on how to create flexible routines that support your English Language Learners while still being easy to adapt to changing classroom settings? Check out our blog post for a few easy-to-implement ideas you can put into practice right away!

Build Vocabulary Acquisition through Background Knowledge

When it comes to acquiring vocabulary, rote memorization is not very effective. Instead, what supports English Language Learners in growing their vocabulary is having meaningful context or background knowledge.

Tech tools that give students context using real-world scenarios are an excellent way to encourage vocabulary acquisition. Flocabulary by Nearpod gives an overview of current events in The Week in Rap, providing students with a sense of what’s going on in the world while simultaneously expanding their vocabulary. In Read to Lead’s learning games, students learn new vocabulary within the context of different workplace industries such as medical, journalism, pharmacy, and public sector. These tools encourage vocabulary acquisition by providing students with background knowledge they can use to understand, remember, and internalize new words learned.

Use Tools Designed to Help You Reach Every Learner

As educators, nobody is more aware than us of the fact that every child has a different pace and style of learning. But in a classroom of 20 students, it can be a real challenge, if not almost impossible to differentiate instruction to meet each child’s needs and abilities.

Luckily, technology can lend a hand. Read to Lead’s learning games allow you to confidently meet students’ educational needs using real-time progress and CCSS-aligned formative assessments. Reach every learner with accessibility tools designed for the whole classroom. Read to Lead offers English Language Learners additional support through accessibility tools like the audio read-aloud function for students to get familiar with how the English language sounds, and the language translation feature that includes access to over 100 languages in gameplay. The glossary is another handy tool for students who may need a refresher on new words they have learned in context, and Super Ed, our support hero, is bound to be a hit among English Language Learners.

By using tools that are designed specifically for students with varying needs and abilities, you will better be able to help them reach their academic and language goals. For more guidance on employing differentiated learning techniques in your classroom to more effectively address English Language Learners’’ needs, check out this blog post!

Show Parents Their Child’s Progress

It takes a village to raise a child – and when it comes to their education, nothing could be closer to the truth. Students are only in the classroom for a few hours a day, but their learning continues even after they leave. Sharing data and information about a student’s progress with their parents, caregivers, intervention teachers, tutors, and other people invested in their success is critical to ensuring that the student gets the continual support they need even outside the classroom.

The Read to Lead platform makes it a breeze to keep all stakeholders in the loop about students’ progress. Generating individual student reports that show how each student is performing with Read to Lead learning games is simple, and these reports, as well as the class performance reports, can easily be downloaded as a PDF to be emailed to parents or printed out as a physical reference sheet. Read to Lead also integrates with popular learning management systems (LMS) like Google Classroom, Schoology, and Canvas which makes sharing regular student progress updates even easier.

If you’re looking to support English Language Learners in your classroom as well as empowering the next generation of readers and leaders then Read to Lead’s learning games are for you! Sign up for a free account here.

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Teaching Women’s History in the Making

Read to Lead Team — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 17:34:00 +0000

March may be Women’s History Month, but every day is a chance for us to inspire our students to be the pioneers, innovators, and change-makers of tomorrow!

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women who have taken risks, broken frontiers, and paved the way for future generations. It is a recognition of the impact of women in history.

From the Daughters of Liberty, founded in 1765 as one of the earliest formal organizations of women in the US, to the Suffragettes who fought for women’s rights to vote –

From Hedy Lamarr, who invented the technology that forms the foundation for WiFi, first used in World War II, to Claudette Colvin, a teenaged activist and pioneer in the civil rights movement who refused to give up her seat on the bus –

And in more recent times, from Kamala Harris, the first Black-South Asian woman to become the Vice President of the US, to Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education and the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate –

Incredible women have pushed boundaries, expanded the role of women, and left their mark on history. Indeed, their work continues to impact our lives today.

Our students also have great potential to be the next generation of leaders, innovators, and women making history. They stand poised to be the pioneers for the next generation, and we, as educators, have to equip them with the necessary tools to create history.

Find out how you can empower your students to become the trailblazers of the future with these four strategies!

Debate and Discuss

Women’s issues have come a long way, and every day, countless women are out there continuing to pave a better, brighter future for our youth. However, there is still room for improvement and a myriad of issues that women are still fighting for.

What better way to teach women’s history in the making than to bring these discussions into your classroom? Whether it’s how to get more women into leadership roles, or close the gender pay gap, introducing these topics to your students through debates and discussions can help them become more engaged in issues concerning women.

If you’re wondering where to start – don’t worry; we’ve got you covered! Use this debate question about mandatory paid parental leave from Read to Lead’s special Women’s History Month supplement to promote a discussion through debate.

Introduce Representation and Diversity through Read to Lead Games

Do your students love games? Why not use Read to Lead learning games to highlight just how your students too can become women who make a difference in their communities?

The Read to Lead gamified platform gives students the opportunity to interact with a diverse staff in a wide range of professions, as well as introduces students to women in positions of leadership – all while playing fun games. This array of characters helps expose students to different career paths and shows them that women, too, can try new things, push boundaries, and be agents of change in their community.

By introducing representation and diversity that showcases women occupying important positions in different fields and industries, we empower our students to see themselves in these roles.

Each game in Read to Lead also presents an issue that students need to resolve. By working through these games, students hone their critical thinking and SEL skills. In addition to that, these issues are related to common issues in the workplace and society, including women’s issues.

For example, in the learning game, Financial Crisis (Morning), LaDonna Watkins asks for a pay raise. Educators can use this as a springboard for discussions around the gender wage gap and how this negatively impacts not just women but everyone in society.

Tune in to Read to Lead: Live! a career chat webinar series

Pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and listen to the journey of a trailblazing modern-day woman entrepreneur – Tiffany Norwood, Founder, and CEO of Tribetan.

At the young age of 27, she raised $670 million to build the first-ever global digital radio platform, launch three satellites into space, support the development of MP3/MP4 technologies, and invest in a new generation of digital radio receivers. Tiffany was also the first in her family to be born with all of her civil rights, thanks to the women activists who fought for them.

Want your students to learn from other women who have smashed gender stereotypes and challenged the status quo? The Read to Lead: Live! Library also has a selection of great interviews with other women who have made an impact in their industry – all for you and your students’ viewing pleasure!

Build Literacy Skills to Empower Women Trailblazers of the Future

Reading and literacy skills are a strong predictor of future success and the foundation to create empowered women. If we want to cultivate the women leaders and trailblazers of the future, we have to start now. By helping our students develop their literacy skills, we are setting them up for success.

But we get it: getting students to read can be difficult! That’s why we’ve created the Million Words Read Challenge!

Combining competition and collaboration while constantly cheering on students to success, this isn’t your average reading challenge – but it’s sure to get your students in the spirit of reading! And with 5,000 words read per Read to Lead game completed, students will be expanding their literacy skills by leaps and bounds, putting them on the path to future success.

Women’s history month is a great time for us to celebrate the successes and achievements of the women who have paved the way to where we are today. It is also a time to look to the future – and see our students as the future generation of women pioneers making history.

Get started on empowering your students with Read to Lead by clicking here!

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Flexible Classroom Routines For Any Setting

Read to Lead Team — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 18:15:51 +0000

As a teacher, are you on Team Routine or Team Go-With-The-Flow? There’s no denying that there are benefits to both approaches to managing your students.

Classroom routines create a daily rhythm for students. They hold students accountable, keep everyone on task, and allow for a smooth flow to the school day. On the other hand, being flexible has been an essential skill in the past two years, allowing teachers to adapt to the many changes and upheavals the pandemic has brought. Yet, amid all the shifts they’ve been through, students are craving structure.

So how can we get the best of both worlds and create an ideal learning environment for our students – whether that’s in an in-person, remote, or hybrid setting? Here are a few ideas to help you plan flexible classroom routines that apply to any setting!

Say Your Classroom Mantra Together

“I am”…two of the most powerful words, for what you put after them shapes your reality. – Zig Ziglar

A classroom mantra can be a powerful tool to get students in the right mindset for learning. Classroom mantras are often composed of a set of uplifting and empowering “I am” statements that help guide students toward positive thoughts.

Together with your students, choose a set of “I am” phrases to set as your classroom mantra. We love Teacher Megan DuVarney Forbes’s (@toocoolformiddleschool) classroom mantra for inspiration!

At the start of each lesson, ask all your students to recite the mantra together. This not only fosters a sense of community and boosts students’ spirits, but it can also be done regardless of whether your students are in a physical classroom with you, or joining you virtually!

Start Your Day with an SEL Question

Ever wanted to know the real answer when you ask your kids “How are you today?”. SEL questions can help with that!

Starting your day with an SEL check-in question is an easy addition to your flexible classroom routine that can help you keep your finger on the pulse of how your students are doing. Tools like Nearpod can make this a fun and interactive part of your classroom routine. Nearpod offers check-in activities like the Gratitude Jar and Energy and Mood Temperature Check to guide students in articulating how they’re showing up to their day of learning. Remote, in-person, or hybrid, this daily check-in is sure to help nurture students’ SEL skills, while giving them the structure and consistency they need!

Build-in 15 Minutes of Independent Reading into Each Day

Did you know that just six minutes of extra reading per day helps students achieve college and career readiness benchmarks? Include 15 minutes of daily independent reading to establish a sturdy pillar in your classroom routine that also helps with students’ literacy skills!

Read to Lead’s learning games are an excellent choice for independent reading sessions. Each interactive learning game lasts 15 to 30 minutes, and the easy and flexible implementation makes it a breeze to add to any classroom routine. Sign up for the Million Words Read Challenge to give students a collective goal to work towards to further encourage teamwork and a collaborative learning environment. Once they become “Millionaires” by collectively reading one million words on the Read to Lead platform, students will also be awarded prize packs and a celebration party for their class! What a way to incentivize students to read as part of their routine!

Implement a Gamified Exit Ticket

Exit tickets are a part of practically every middle school teacher’s classroom routine, but how often have you run out of sticky notes or just didn’t have the bandwidth to print and cut paper slips? Besides, pen-and-paper exit tickets don’t work in the virtual classroom anyway!

If you’re frustrated and looking for a good way to implement exit tickets that work with a variety of learning settings, look no further than Read to Lead! Online or off, students can easily log into their Read to Lead account and complete an immersive learning game in line with English Language Art standards. Students feel like they’re playing video games in class and you get detailed information about student progress and performance on the Teacher Reports Tab. Read to Lead can also be used as an Early Finisher activity to keep students on task in between lessons! Sign up for free for Read to Lead and start creating flexible classroom routines you can easily adapt to any learning setting.

By introducing routines that can flex for any class setting (remote, hybrid, or in-person) we can keep structure for students and a sense of normalcy… something we’re all craving these days!

How are you creating classroom routines this year? Tell us on Twitter! @readtoleadgames

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