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Weissheimer et al (2019) found that gamification consumes significant class time, students were burdened by difficult vocabulary words, and often times the same word was used excessively (p.1153).
In other studies completed by different groups it was stated "experimental designs used to evaluate games need to be more rigorous" (Fadhli, 2019, p.847). There is also the concern that the "apps do not allow the teacher to control the words the student is working with and do not record student progress, provide explicit instruction in word meanings, provide multiple exposure to new vocabulary in a variety of contexts, and has little content" (Northrop & Andrei, 2018, p.628).

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Fadhli  et al. (2020) tell us that their review of 24 studies "positively effects motivational affordances, psychological and behavioral outcomes" (p.851).   Goodwin et al. (2019) reviewed Monster, P.I., a vocabulary game that teaches morphology, syntax, and vocabulary and produces "reliable and valid scores" (p.608).  Kingsley and Hagin (2015) used open ended questions and quoted some interesting student responses - "most other classes go in one straight line [whereas in this game]  you do different things but end up with the same results" (p.12).

Turan (2018) used 25 six point questions to evaluate student motivation on vocabulary instruction through gamification; they conclude with "students' vocabulary learning motivation was positive when gamification strategies and gamification tools were employed" (n.p.).

Demkah and Bhargava (2019) state that "it is a fact that digital revolution seems to be shaping the desitny of almost all human activities ... teachers will have to align their curricula to learns' reality" (p.173).

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Feel free to follow boards on Pinterest that support this type of educational climate:

Gamification, STREAM into our KUHL Space, Presented (aka Gifted), School Daze, and 5th Grade Science Adventure are boards on Pinterest that offer some great resources.

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This is a presentation on gamification that we created for another class that offers many other resources.

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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Chatterpix is available on Apple and Android products.  Students simply snap a picture, draw a line for the mouth, record their own voice, and make anything talk to add fun and engagement to students presenting learned information.  Puppetmaster is another great ap for students to use - they can draw or create a 3D pupped or use their personal bitmoji as their likeness.  Students can manipulate the screen for movement or can have the device track and mimic their movements. https://www.shmonster.com/puppetmaster/

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Create ChatterPix with friends and family as silly greetings, playful messages, creative cards, or even fancy book reports. Simply take a photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice. And best of all, it’s FREE!

AGES: 5-12

CATEGORY: Creative Expression

TOOLS: 22 stickers, 10 frames and 11 photo filters

ABOUT DUCK DUCK MOOSE:
(A subsidiary of Khan Academy)
Duck Duck Moose, an award-winning creator of educational mobile apps for families, is a passionate team of engineers, artists, designers, and educators. Founded in 2008, the company has created 21 top-selling titles and has received 21 Parents’ Choice Awards, 18 Children’s Technology Review Awards, 12 Tech with Kids’ Best Pick App Awards, and a KAPi award for “Best Children’s App” at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Duck Duck Moose is now part of the Khan Academy family. Like all Khan Academy offerings, all Duck Duck Moose apps are now 100% free, without ads or subscriptions.

For kids ages 2-6, don't miss Khan Academy Kids, our new early learning app to help young children with reading, writing, math and social-emotional development!

We’d love to hear from you! Visit us at www.duckduckmoose.com or drop us a line at support@duckduckmoose.com.

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ChatterPix Kids by Duck Duck Moose - Apps on Google Play

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Let’s ChatterPix! You can make anything talk -- pets, books, doodles, and more.

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Classcraft, Classbadges, or create a quest on your own - find a digital breakout room or puzzle. Go to ISTE.org for many great ideas.

https://www.iste.org/explore/In-the-classroom/5-ways-to-gamify-your-classroom

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Pitoyo (2019) studied how using gamification through Quizizz to teach vocabulary to students also provided reduced text anxiety.   He considered the impact to the student that uses Quizizz regularly as a formative assessment on the typical anxiety that accommodates many high stakes summative assessments.    This is  a multiplayer, student paced game that students were allowed to play on their own devices.  Students can select from pre-made quizzes or create their own.   Students enjoyed the game-like atmosphere and acknowledge that that prompted them to play more, which in turn improved their word knowledge, thus their confidence in their probably test results resulting in decreased test anxiety (Pitoyo, p.464).  Students particularly liked game elements including:  the meme interactions, and the leader board (Pitoyo, p.465-466).

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New name. Same commitment to helping every student find a way.

Get any resource and adapt it to your needs

Create aha moments for each student

Accommodate students without singling them out

AI Where It Counts

Amplify shared human experiences, not digital isolation

Respect teacher agency, while also saving time

Prioritize privacy and impact

No more password juggling or missing assignments

Wayground connects seamlessly to your school's existing ecosystems.

Get verified student data protection

We're committed to responsible technology that puts educator and student privacy first. With enterprise-grade security, comprehensive data protection, and signed agreements that ensure your information remains yours.

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Quizizz is now Wayground | Teacher AI and Resources

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Find standards-aligned resources that engage every student. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) helps teachers differentiate instruction with AI and track student progress.

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Tinytool.com requires no student login but provides an easy way for students to connect a visual image with a word meaning.

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Free Online Cartoon and Comic Strip Maker

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ToonyTool.com is a free online cartoon maker and (animated) comic creator tool: create and share your own cartoons, comics and animations. Choose or upload a background, add our or your own characters and speech bubbles. You can create single or multiple frames comics and combine them into one comic or animation.

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Northrop and Adrei (2018) tells of World's Worst Pet - a free vocabulary app geared towards younger learners as  "one app with high interactivity and built-in multiple exposure to vocabulary words" (p.628).

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iPad Screenshots

Help your students build a rich vocabulary of essential words! World's Worst Pet exposes students to over 1000 Tier Two words at 6 different levels through four engaging games. Aligned to the Common Core, this app provides student-friendly definitions, a playful narrative, a fun reward system and thought-provoking writing prompts!

World's Worst Pet is part of i-Ready- an award-winning, blended learning program published by Curriculum Associates. Learn more about i-Ready at i-ready.com/empower.

FEATURES

World's Worst Pet is structured to provide repeated exposures to a cluster of conceptually related target words.
* Teaches more than 1000 words across five grade levels, from grades 4 - 8 with content available for students who are working a level behind
* Student-friendly definitions provide clear explanations with rich examples that illustrate how each word is used.
* Engaging narrative and reward system keeps students motivated
* Activities include word context, word sort, synonyms, and antonyms.
* Students see the same word multiple times in a single set of activities.
* Includes Spanish cognates
* Includes immediate feedback
* Uses a real human voice not synthesized robotic speech
* Aligns with Common Core State Standards
* Writing prompts provide an opportunity to use words in types of writing identified by the Common Core

RESEARCH BASE

World's Worst Pet leverages best practices from Reading research
* Targets Tier Two words, selected from research-based lists.
* Also targets domain-specific words, including science and social studies words.
* Teaches words in conceptually related clusters
* Provides clear student-friendly explanations
* Provides multiple exposures and repeated practice across a variety of contexts
* Helps students make multiple connections between words and their experiences.
* Explores word relationships, including synonyms and antonyms
* Includes Spanish cognates such as vehículo for vehicle or numeroso for numerous
* Includes writing prompts focused on the target words in each cluster

ALIGNED TO COMMON CORE

World's Worst Pet develops concepts, skills, and strategies as targeted by the Common Core.
* "The importance of students acquiring a rich and varied vocabulary," write the authors of the Common Core, "cannot be overstated."
* Tier Two words are central to understanding complex text, and World's Worst Pet provides multiple exposures and repeated practice in these words.
* Aligns with vocabulary standards in these sections of the Common Core State Standards:
o Reading Standards for Literature
o Reading Standards for Information Text
o Language Standards: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

SUPPORT

Have questions or feedback?
Email: i-readysupport@cainc.com
Phone: 800-225-0248
Monday - Thursday 8:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. EST
Friday 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. EST

Version 1.1.0

iOS compatibility and fixes

Great For Educational Purposes

I Use This App At My School And It Works Great! Just Wish There Were More So Called 'Options'

Just noooo

This is the worst thing in the world like a two year old can do better then this like who would make this you people call this a app well I call it crap you don't learn any thing.

This app is terrible

Really? You expect me to do this at school and call it "fun"? Disgusting! It is the worst app I've ever seen. I hope no other human being has to go through this. Making me write an essay... As if!

Information

Seller

Curriculum Associates, LLC

Compatibility

Requires iOS 5.1.1 or later. Compatible with iPad.

Copyright

© 2014 Curriculum Associates

Family Sharing

With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.

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‎Help your students build a rich vocabulary of essential words! World's Worst Pet exposes students to over 1000 Tier Two words at 6 different levels through four engaging games. Aligned to the Common Core, this app provides student-friendly definitions, a playful narrative, a fun reward system and th...

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Science teachers can attach levels and badging to interactive online simulations and create a hands-on learning approach to science vocabulary with no expense or mess.

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By converting our sims to HTML5, we make them seamlessly available across platforms and devices. Whether you have laptops, iPads, chromebooks, or BYOD, your favorite PhET sims are always right at your fingertips.Become part of our mission today, and transform the learning experiences of students everywhere!

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Gamification is the future of education and can support both students and teachers.  A meta-analysis of 24 studies shows that gamification "positively effects motivational affordance, psychological, and beahvioral outcomes" (Fadhli, et.al., 2020, p.851).

S5: Kapp (2012) argues that "games allow the liberty to think outside of normal parameters, to add a little bit of fantasy or surrealism, and to force people to think in different ways" (p.170).

S2 Abrams and Walsh (2014) remind us of key features of a successful vocabulary learning game - "control, competence, appropriate challenges, immediate experiences, and clear feedback - were all part of their overall playing, and learning experience (p.56).

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a. Introduce gamification for vocabulary instruction in a live PD session and provide list of sites for them to use.  Provide ongoing support and encouragement.
S6: Kinsley and Grabner-Hagen (2015) discovered in order for "new literacy to be considered new, it must be embedded within authentic situations and used to promote 21st-century  student outcomes" pg.4
S9: Weissheimer et al. (2019) "words have to be manipulated and held in working memory before they can have a chance of entering long-term memory" (p. 1139).

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Implications for Instructional Practice and Research 

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Implications for Instructional Practice and Research 

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Research indicates that gamification can improve vocabulary knowledge; teachers can scaffold instruction to meet student’s levels, thus freeing up extra instructional time to focus on small group teaching.  It allows for "vocabulary items [to] move beyond just assessing whether a word's meaning is known to considering meaning knowledge as it relates to difference concepts, ranges of meanings, and word relations" (p. 605).

Abrams and Walsh (2014) tell us of a challenge within Vocabulary.com; we provided the link above.  This allows a student to create their own study list and expand specific, required vocabulary that provides a path to cognitive mastery and instant feedback that provides fun (p.50-51).  One great feature is that it allows the student to use both in context and out of context parameters (Abrams & Walsh, p.52).  This study showed both in classroom uses and a after-school vocabulary building club; both used collaborative challenges and competition to fuel student engagement.  Students particularly liked that they could control their word lists and that "contemporary innovations and analytics presented students ... the ability to learn from their mistakes" (p.56).

Further research could study how gamification can be more closely aligned to standards and enhance language attainment.  The news this week tells of doctors prescribing a video game to treat ADHD.

Another topic for further research might be what connection can be made through gamified vocabulary instruction to improve student comprehension?

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The heart of Vocabulary.com is The Challenge. It's an adaptive game you play to help you improve your vocabulary. To get started, just start playing. We'll get to know you. The questions start...

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Gamification allows students to choose their path or quest which provides them  ownership of their learning.   Demkah and Bhargava (2019) explained "emotions derived from games can help to create a positive link and allows deeper processing that reinforces neural pathways" (p.170). "Gamification of curriculum affords students opportunities to use technology to communicate and collaborate within both traditional and online environments." (Kingsley & Grabner-Hagen, 2015, p. 11).

Students can also use creative technology tools to demonstrate their learning.
Demkah and Bhargava (2019) explained students "behaved less like students but more like IT specialists or scientists, solving a real problems effortlessly, in collaboration with their peers and enjoying the task assigned to them" (p.173).

The badging and avatar personalization provide positive competition and a taste of publishing their own media.   Good producers of technology become better educated consumers of technology.  Demkah and Bhargava (2019) further explained "students could self-regulate their learning. Students picked what activities to complete based on skill, knowledge, interest, and time"  (p. 7).

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Many of the reports we found deal with college aged and middle school students; though we are more interested in elementary students, these older student studies did provide valuable information for our research.  Fadhli, et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis of multiple studies of children aged 6-10 and found that "gamification method can improve children's cognitive, skills, attitude, language, health, and social-emotional abilities" (p. 845-852).

Studies included private and public schools in many countries around the world.

Studies included qualitative and quantitative results.

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Game based learning has a positive impact on student motivation and knowledge acquisition in vocabulary instruction.  Turan, et al., (2018) tell us that through improving motivation "gamification can take the quality of language learning process one step further" (p.3).

Traditional vocabulary instruction does not lend itself to information retention, but gamification shows promise.
Demkah and Bhargava (2019) tell us that "if we teach a child basic skills through his/her strongest intelligence the s/he will have an easier time learning" (p. 171).   Goodwin, et al., (p.2019) reviews "a study of 8 and 9 year olds found vocabulary to be an area of significant weakness for poor comprehenders and showed that vocabulary was related to the ability to read exception words" (p.604).  Gamification of vocabulary instruction practices provides an alternative to traditional methods that is proven to be more effective and more engaging.  Goodwin, et. al., details this as gamificaiton "helped teachers design productive instruction and their students seemed to enjoy it" (p.615).

Additionally, gamified vocabulary instruction works well for most students because it allows differentiated instruction for all students including ELL and ESE.
Northrop and Andrei (2018) reviewed 53 apps for teaching vocabulary in classroom settings and provide tools for teachers to evaluate other apps and integrate them with positive learning outcomes (p.623).   Apps need to teach vocabulary explicitly and intentionally with multiple exposures using visuals, sentence examples, and context clues (Northrop & Adrei, p.624).  We also need to be mindful of optional upgraded content that costs, whether or not students have to create accounts, which may or may not expose private information, and how online rewards/badges are handled (Northrop & Adrei, p. 624).

Games are the vernacular of today’s students and connects their outside of school interests with in school activities.   Chien (2019) reviews how students are learning vocabulary while playing Minecraft without even realizing it - "gameplay vocabulary came from the 2,000 most frequent words" (p.14).  Therefore, this game "appears to provide an excellent learning environment for enhancing vocabulary development in NNS learners of English" (Chien, p.14).

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Why Minecraft | Minecraft: Education Edition

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Minecraft is a great school resource. Educators believe it helps them teach their curriculum and lessons. Find out more about Minecraft: Education Edition.

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Gamification is a powerful tool for engaging students; but it may not be precisely what you think it is; please don't confuse gamification with "edutainment  - or any electronic games that use entertainment in the service of education ... [and] tend to focus on simple game structures" (Abrams & Walsh, 2014, p.49).   While some of those games can be useful tools in an elementary classroom, and we will share great examples of digital tools to help with vocabulary instruction, we want to be clear that teachers and administrators understand that the use of badging, leaderboards, and setting any assignment within a framework of an overarching story-line is gamification.   Fahdli, et al. (2020) provide a clear definition of gamification as "using game-based mechanics, aesthetics, and game-thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote laerning, and solve problems" (Kapp as quoted in Fahdli, et al., p.846).

Professional Developments can provide you tools to use some day and on Monday;  we will provide you both.  We selected gamification because studies have shown students need an engaging and interactive way of learning.

It is our job to prepare students for their future. "Students of the twenty first century are required to think flexibly, to self-reflect, solve problems and use creativity" (Demkah & Bhargava, 2019, p. 170).