(3 minute read)

We’re always happy to hear how our teachers use our games for the maximum effect, and as many teachers return from their half terms here in the UK, we thought it would be a good time to share a few different ideas on how teachers around the world use and integrate Teach Your Monster games in the classroom.

The following suggestions can be a 5-minute warm-up, a time-filler, or even a way to jazz up your full lesson with a whole hour of learning…

Carpet time

During carpet time, the teacher can select a game to demonstrate playing on the interactive whiteboard and then allow the children to take turns or come up in pairs to play. 

If you’d like to lead the learning (and keep bottoms on carpets!), you can give each child a whiteboard to use and ask the children questions like: 

“Which number comes next? Write it in secret on your whiteboard” (Number Skills)

“How do you write this grapheme? Can you think of any other ways to write it?” (Teach Your Monster to Read)

They can respond on whiteboards and show you when they’ve finished. 

Use our game Reading for Fun to select a book and read together as a class for a calming activity. Teachers can be pretty hands-off with this if you get a ‘lucky helper’ from the class to turn the page, and it is perfect if you need 5 minutes to set up for the next activity of the day. 

Use for individual learning (where children have access to individual devices or laptops)

Set up children with their own profiles and let them take their monster through the game—this allows kids to play at their own pace and recap necessary skills. For brand new players, you can demonstrate the log-in and game on the interactive whiteboard first, then allow them to explore independently. 

One of our super fans, teacher Lori Cash, recommends peer-to-peer help for new players or selecting game ‘prefects’ to teach other kids how to play. 

Teachers can ask children to go to ‘Practice Mode’ during individual play for a particular skill, game, or number, providing targeted practice on weaker skills. 

Use in a carousel, centres or ‘learning stations’

If you like to set up ‘stations’ for learning, one station could be set up for ‘e-learning ’ with devices to practice a specific subject using one of our games. If you’re not sure what ‘stations’ are, read more about them in this handy article. 

For reading time, this station could be Teach Your Monster to Read for early readers, or Reading for Fun for more progressed readers. 

For math lessons, this station could be set up with Number Skills, either with specific goals in mind using ‘Practice Mode’, or more of free play time through the adventure mode. We’ve provided a handy printable for you to download and print for your focused Number Skills station here. 

We also have a whole bunch of handy printables for the other stations in class too, find those here. 

Reward time

The best part is that playing our games feels like reward time — kids love iPads, and what better thing to do with reward time than some more stealthy learning? 

Another teacher, Adam Samuel, recommends using the game after break times.

“I often use it to settle in back down after break time or lunch time. It's a really nice way to gently bring them back in after what could be a nice fraught break or lunch!”

I hope this has provided you with some new ideas for using the Teach Your Monster games in the classroom. We’re always looking for ways to help our teachers out so if you’d like to share your ideas on how you use Teach Your Monster in the classroom, please drop us a message at [email protected]. Happy teaching! 

Kay Leathers, Ex-Primary teacher and freelance consultant