Teachers everywhere are implementing gamification in their classroom. This educational trend has grown very quickly especially considering that the Merriam-Webster online dictionary lists the term’s first use as happening in 2010. The upswing in Gamification, though, is just one small part of the growing awareness of the importance of play in education and child development. Early educators have always understood that play helps students explore their environment and interact with others in materials in imaginative ways. Let’s build on what those educators know and take a look at the trends around play and specifically, gamification, and figure out how you can get on board and implement some new strategies in your classroom.

Children are able to soak up knowledge and information at an extremely fast rate. When they’re in school, they process enormous amounts of learning and retain the vast majority of lessons they learn. With this ability, they are able to pick up on new habits and ideas very quickly. As a responsible parent, it will fall upon you to impart some lessons that they may not be able to acquire from school or their friends.

We’ve all seen it happen. The recent Equifax data breach that lead to exposing sensitive information about over 143 million Americans has people more scared than ever about the way institutions are handling their confidential information. People are rightfully skeptical about where their information goes and how safe it really is.

Instead of struggling to stop your students from using Snapchat during class, how about encouraging them? We all know just how popular the social media platform is with the younger generations. In fact, a large proportion of Snapchat users are yet to graduate from high school. So how about harnessing this engagement for your educational ends by incorporating Snapchat into a lesson plan?

Designing classroom structures and workflows that are more transparent helps demonstrate to stakeholders just how much great, innovative work is taking place in the service of student growth.

Getting students engaged in a topic means approaching it in new and innovative ways. Poetry is no different. Once your students know how to analyze poetry on their own, you’ll want to make sure that they have plenty of opportunities to experience poetry in its many forms.