How+are+games+used?

= How are games currently used and how could they be used ? =

 Here are some research-based examples of how games can be a fun and effective way of helping students respond to literature:


 * Games promote active , student-centered learning , motivation , cooperation  and social learning , and reduce risk of failure.


 * Studies suggest that handling or playing games can help **enhance** students' problem solving techniques, critical thinking skills, recall of text, memory, and vocabulary.


 * It important to create games for students, but having students create their own games is equally important  if learning is an active process.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Having students create their own games allows for //higher levels of thinking// and more personal response (affective parameter) to what is being learned.




 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Creating games can teach students <span style="color: #d47db3; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">reasoning strategies <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> and skills.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Berrenberg (1991) states: “It is generally assumed that students learn and retain more when they are actively and personally involved with the course material… relatively few examination procedures incorporate this active approach."


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> Games such as checkers can teach offensive and defensive alternatives that can <span style="color: #008080; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">intellectually motivate <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;"> children.


 * "In //The Significance of Rosenblatt on the Field of Teaching Literature,// Church (1997) states “…during any one reading experience readers may shift back and forth along a continuum between efferent and aesthetic modes of the reading processing” (p. 72). It is often during the shifting (transaction) from these two stances that readers began to acquire knowledge. Thus assessment of reading comprehension becomes quite complex and both stances must be inclusive in the assessment process.


 * Alternative assessment studies, such as retellings, have introduced changes in research to consider both stances.


 * Reader response theories indicate that both a communicative and a personal response approach to reading is the intention of the tasks assigned to learners, making the learners active participants in the reading process. The interactions that occur during the reading process involve both the efferent and aesthetic modes of learning.


 * Assessing reader responses through activities that help activate learning is imperative if evaluating both modes of reader response theory (efferent and aesthetic), which includes all three parameters of the reading process (textual, affective, and cognitive).


 * Creating and playing games (as a form of reader responses activities) has also been <span style="color: #1b559d; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">used to assess comprehension . They have often been used to assess the efferent modes of learning (textual differencing, recall of text, and memory). These studies considered the ‘text’ the focus of learning.

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 * Other studies considered Vygotskian features of development important, relating the social cultural aspects with learning. These studies considered the “reader’ the focus of learning, the aesthetic modes of learning in their research."