Week 7 Educational Technologies (Chess and Crossword Puzzles)

Games (Chess & Crossword Puzzles)

Games are useful in the classroom they improve reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. The use of games in the class presents opportunities for instructors to make course content relevant and engage students. The benefits of games include having fun and feeling good, encourages family time, memory and cognitive skills, lowers blood pressure, speeds up response time, reduces stress, improves the immune system, and boost child development (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014).

                                Chess

Chess educates the mind and prepares it for life. Chess encourages improvement in the areas of mathematics and reading and advances test scores. The game of chess promotes self-esteem, social skills paperwork ability, and problem-solving skills. Chess is an excellent tool in the classroom and builds a sound judgment. Chess gives students the power to prepare instead of relying on luck. Chess gives players total satisfaction realizing, the more they play, the more they receive rewards (America's Foundation for Chess Research Study, 2009).

                                           Crossword Puzzles

Crossword puzzles have a positive effect on student retaining critical information. Crosswords strengthen and broaden students vocabulary verbally and visually. Crossword puzzles work perfectly with several classroom teaching and learning styles lessening the chance of fatigue for students. Accomplished and brilliant college students prefer other learning methods like crossword puzzles and chess over lecture. Instructors can utilize crossword puzzle to review course material for testing (Davis, Shepherd, & Zwiefelhofer, 2009).

I selected crossword puzzles and chess as an alternative tool for classroom instruction because games in place of classroom lecture offer a more relaxed classroom dynamics and help students to utilize critical thinking skills to solve problems in and out of class (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014).

Examples of how I might incorporate crossword puzzles and chess into my professional practice. To include chess, I would use chess into the curriculum to assist students to elevate their problem-solving skills and apply exercises where students can play each other to enhance their critical thinking skills (America's Foundation for Chess Research Study, 2009). To include crossword puzzles, I will create a crossword puzzle that includes class content and allow students to solve for extra credit work. Another way to incorporate crossword puzzles is to divide the students into groups and allow them to answer the puzzle, the students who finish first with the right answers is considered the winners (Davis, Shepherd, & Zwiefelhofer, 2009).

References

 

America's Foundation for Chess Research Study. (2009). Educational Benefits of Chess - Brief Review of Academy Literature. Teaneck, NJ: Inland Chess Academy.

Davis, T. M., Shepherd, B., & Zwiefelhofer, T. (2009). Reviewing for Exams: Do Crossword Puzzles Help in the Success of Student Learning. The Journal of Effective Teaching. An online Journal developed to teaching excellence, 3(9), 4-10.

Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, pp. 3025-3034.