Guest article by Chris Wright from Dadding on the Road. This article is part of our Gameschooling with Video Games series.
Not all video games are jumping from platform to platform “fragging” nameless baddies. Many games out there are full to the brim with lore, backstories, and world-building. While some games will deliver exposition in the form of movies and cut scenes, many will require reading.
I have heard many a tale of kids learning to read and even type because of video games. Sometimes it’s so they can read the directions without parental help. Sometimes the learning is more passive, as the directions are printed and read to them. Other times, kids want to be able to chat with their friends who are also playing the game. (Please vet the people your kids are playing with, and make sure you know them in real life.) Whatever the case, video games can definitely help with various English/Language Arts (ELA) skills.
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Skyrim: On the outside, Skyrim is just an adventure game, but under the surface, it requires quite a lot of reading. Every time a skill levels up, players need to dive into a branching “skill tree” to choose where to assign points, opening up more paths, and closing others. Players need to study these paths to make the best use of the skills for the character they are trying to build. In addition to this, the Skyrim game is built in the Elder Scrolls universe with deep lore. The game explores this lore through hidden books, scrolls, and missions through the game world. You could play Skyrim for hours and never move your character an inch while you peruse these in-game tomes.
Salt: This is an open exploration world where players sail from island to island, crafting better ships, finding better loot, and unraveling the mysteries of the world. Every bit of exposition in the game is in a found book, with no cut scenes or spoken audio. Even tutorials for crafting recipes are found in in-game books.
Minecraft keeps popping up, doesn’t it? While Minecraft isn’t natively an ELA game, one organization, The Uncensored Library, has dedicated a server to reproducing books, blogs, and articles that are banned in several countries as a way to circumvent government censorship and allow people to educate themselves on events in their country and around the world.
In addition, there are many Minecraft-themed books for kids, both instruction manuals and fiction. For quite some time, our son’s favorite book was a Minecraft book. I will say that the writing was pretty terrible and I couldn’t read it, but it got him reading independently and he really enjoyed it.
Scribblenauts is a puzzle game in which you write words to provide your character with items to solve the puzzle. Correct spelling is required, but it will prompt you with possible correct suggestions.
Spelling Apps abound, from Wordscapes to Word Zen, and everything in between. These games provide you with around 4-8 letters, and your job is to create as many words as you can from them. Some games list words in alphabetical order while others have you form a crossword-type puzzle. Words With Friends is an online, multiplayer Scrabble game. Another popular word app is Wordle, in which you attempt to guess the word with only a few guesses. You begin knowing how many letters are in the word, and the app tells you when you guess a correct letter and when one is in the correct location (like Mastermind).
In addition to learning English, video games can and have been leveraged to teach other languages. Some games are specifically built for it, and in some games, you can switch the language in-game to a language you’re learning for a more immersive experience.
In addition to the games themselves, there are resources to support gameplay. Instructional books, forums, chats, and more. Even books on how to create video games can encourage a child to learn how to read! No matter how you look at it, video games can be great for developing an array of ELA skills. Next up: Learning Math with Video Games!