A Teaching Note: Using Games to Bring a Classroom to Life (Report‪)‬

For decades teachers across the United States have used games as instructional tools. Games provide many benefits to the learning experience. Well-structured gaming lessons increase student immersion into the content, create powerful visual memories of that content, and raise the "fun factor" for a given unit of study. For another benefit, games work with different types of student learners, blending auditory, visual, and kinesthetic (hands-on) opportunities for students to approach and master a subject. When teachers embed games into their classes, they can be useful teaching techniques at any academic level. This teaching note describes the use of a war game at the secondary level, but teachers also can use games with great effectiveness in college history classes. Recently, we developed a unit that made use of a game to help students at West York Area High School in Pennsylvania learn about World War II. Yvette Ganoe is the Instructional Leader for the Social Studies Department at West York Area High School (http://www.wyasd.k12.pa.us). Doug Bryant is the Librarian for the high school but also is certified in Social Studies. During a conversation about the World War II unit in Ganoe's curriculum, Bryant mentioned that one of his hobbies is military strategy board-gaming. Such games put players in the position of the actual military commanders from various battles and campaigns throughout history. When Bryant described how playing the games gave him the sensation of "living" the history, Ganoe decided there might be a teaching application for such games.