The general usefulness of games
- That you can't always win
- How to take turns
- Team work
- To be more patient
- Risk taking
- The importance of persistence
- Anticipation skills
- Memory gains
- Colour and shape recognition
- Pattern recognition
- Vocabulary growth
But as well as these general benefits, there can be more specific benefits for learning that are related to other forms of learning, including:
- Basic counting and mathematics
- Word recognition
- Problem solving
- General knowledge
- Writing (numbers and words)
Schools have long used games in recognition that they can be a beneficial way to learn many things, especially for young children and those with learning difficulties.
The use of board games as part of school literacy and mathematics is motivated by the perceived benefits of:
- repetition and over-learning (i.e. the repetition of something until it becomes second nature and increases the speed of recall);
- incorporating some forms of repetitive learning into game situations to increase enjoyment and help concentration and time on task;
- providing foundational knowledge for other more complex learning.
The application of games to literacy has taken many forms. Here is just one example. It relies on board games that traditionally use a dice to determine the pace of the game. You can take existing games and simply replace the dice with a set of cards that require some simple reading task; each with the number 1 to 6 in small print that dictates the number of spaces moved. There are endless variations. For example:
a) You can choose basic sight words (i.e. words like 'were', 'said', 'there') - that is, words that can't easily be sounded out and are more easily recognised as whole words based on their shape and some partial letter clues. There are a number of these lists available such as the Dolch List that has been in use since 1948. Write the words in print at least 2 cm high and then write a number between 1 and 6 on the top right-hand corner (in much smaller print). You can use existing games like snakes and ladders, but instead of using the dice you have a pile of cards face down that players turn over one at a time and read. If successful, they move a counter the appropriate number of squares to progress the game.
b) Sound cards - Do the same as the above but use sound cards as appropriate for the child's age.
c) Phrase reading - You can use phrase cards instead of single word cards.
d) Teaching colours or numbers - Use colour or number words.
|Image courtesy of 'Heart of the Matter'|
While there are some electronic games that attempt to use repetition and over-learning in similar ways, many of the other general benefits of games seem to be achieved more readily with board games. For a start, there is an added social dimension as children interact with other children as well as adults as they play and learn together.