Last school year, Oakhurst teachers Ms. Staton and Ms. Guerrieri wrote a Teacher Innovation Grant to establish a Game Center in part of the school library. They purchased all sorts of games and puzzles that Oakhurst teachers and families could check out and play together.
The response to the game center has been astounding! The Game Center officially opened this school year at the beginning of October, and there were a whopping 30 games checked out on the first weekend. This year’s grant to expand the game center will provide classrooms, students, and families more opportunities for equitable access to high quality games that promote relationship building, collaborative competition and creative thinking. Games of this sort are expensive and inaccessible for many families and classroom teachers.
There is much research that shows the correlation between game play and student achievement. The science of reading strongly supports the importance of children talking and listening with adults and each other to improve reading skills, and playing games together is an age-appropriate, high interest way to improve reading.
We asked Ms. Staton which games were the most popular and she reported:
The Most Popular Game: Invasion of the Cow Snatchers
The Most Fun Game to Play as a Group: Ratty Ruckus
The Game that Ms. Staton thought would be more popular than it’s been: Planet
Finding new, innovative ways for students to learn and expand their skills is the core reason DEF established its Teacher Innovation Grants more than 20 years ago. If you would like to support these kinds of projects, please visit www.decatureducationfoundation.org/donate.
