Assertion 4. Students show strong engagement when playing vocabulary games.
The video footage of the games Cranium and Wacky Word Race showed a high
level of engagement of all students in the classroom. These games included teamwork
and social interaction involving everyone in the goal of getting points for their team.
Everyone participated actively. Engagement and social interaction are both Affordances
of Learning mentioned in Chapter 3 (see Table 2). Comments made on the questionnaire
about these games included:
• “The games were fun so I learned my vocabulary fast.” (student #11)
• “It combines learning words and play into one games.” (student #15)
• “I learn most things better and faster when I have fun learning them. The
games were fun, so I learned my vocab fast.” (student #11)
The coded comments included three themes that fit within the broader category of
engagement. Putting these three categories together resulted in a total of 36 (22%)
comments out of the total of 161that had to do with engagement. These categories were
the whole child, which included comments about art, acting, and using different parts of
the brain at once; physical activity; and social interaction. These last two categories led
to the next assertion and the primary reason students enjoy playing games.