Welcome to the CooperativeGames.com Educator’s Hub!
This space is dedicated to using cooperative games in Education. There are many ways to use cooperative games in your teaching and probably even more reasons why they’re beneficial.
This website is a place to buy cooperative games. It’s also a place to learn about spicing up your teaching with some cooperative play. Key benefits include:
- Cooperative games teach cooperative skills.
- Cooperative games prepare students for structured cooperative learning curricula.
- Cooperative games nurture inclusiveness so they help build positive classroom community.
- Cooperative games can reduce aggression so they are useful for anti-bullying campaigns.
- Cooperative games involve the whole student—hand, heart, and mind—so they build multifaceted intelligence and address all learning styles.
- Cooperative games can be used to teach subject knowledge.
- Cooperative games are a perfect way to incorporate social and emotional learning in your curriculum.
- Cooperative games have a role to play in special education.
- Cooperative Games reduce the stress and other downsides associated with excessive competition.
- Cooperative games promote collaborative problem-solving.
- Cooperative games are fun!
If you’re a teacher, you’re probably acquainted with the research that shows cooperative learning improves content mastery as well as enhances affect and equity. The tricky thing about making cooperative learning strategies work, however, is establishing true cooperation. Too often, cooperative learning strategies don’t work because students don’t have cooperative skills nor motivation to cooperate. You may have tried assigning roles, giving group points, etc. These methods can work but they are often painstaking and hard to implement. There’s an easier way! Cooperative play sets students up to know how to cooperate. In play, we practice how to be in the world. The mind and emotions are relaxed and open. In cooperative play, cooperative skills and the motivation to cooperate are learned authentically through personal experience.
An increasingly important role for cooperative games is as a social-and-emotional learning (SEL) tool to address student climate. As you will know if you read the free e-book written by Suzanne and posted on this site, there is a great deal of scholarship showing that excess competition promotes aggression. Because kids of all ages love to play, cooperative games are a pleasureful, natural, and fun way to reduce the damage brought on by too much competition.
Another plus: I think you’ll find that with so much competition and scripted curriculum in the schools these days, cooperative games are a welcome relief—a bit of freedom in an otherwise tightly controlled school day. Relax–it’s time to play!
Research on cooperative games is beginning to assemble a critical mass. It’s part of my job (Suzanne Lyons, founder CooperativeGames.com and ex-classroom teacher) to do research on cooperative play as well as collect what’s out there and bring it to you. And there are so many great cooperative play products and tools to choose from these days with more coming on line all the time. Cooperative circle games, cooperative PE games, cooperative board games and cooperative card games …. Books, and blogs, and more… Truly you can get started today. The time is right to discover the magic and let the games begin!
Click Here to go to Suzanne’s blog. You will find lots of specifics about cooperative play for teaching. You can also Share Your Comments about cooperative games in education and See What Other Educators say.
Research on Cooperative Play in Education Coming Soon!
Cooperative Games Product Bundles for Teaching
More Cooperative Games Product Bundles for Teaching Are Coming Soon!
NOTE: if you purchase a bundle, you are eligible to hire us for a one-hour conference call. When you check out, you will have the opportunity to purchase this service in addition to the items in your bundle of cooperative goodies.