Students love playing games. Teachers love when students learn. When you put the two together, you get Ereading Games. As a reading teacher, I struggled to find reading games that were both educational and fun, so I developed my own. Now students around the world can play these games for free on any Internet connected computer.
Here’s how Ereading Games work. The rewarding gameplay gets students involved. They want to explore the levels and unlock secrets. But when they make in-game mistakes, students have to answer reading questions correctly or face in-game penalties. This provides students with an instant incentive to learn. They aren’t learning because of a grade that is seven weeks away; they are learning because they will “die” right now if they don’t. Students have fun and meet learning goals. Everybody wins when students play these reading games.
Genre Piranha: Literary Genre Game
Eat worms and avoid enemies.
Students play as a fish trying to make it to a lighthouse. Eat worms, hide in the weeds, and answer HUNDREDS of questions about literary genre. Did I mention that players occasionally transform into a giant fish that rules the waters? Or that you have to shoot yourself out of a cannon and blast through brick walls? It’s a lot of fun. This game is mobile-friendly.
Viewpoint Pilot: Point of View Game
Collect power-ups. Blast enemies.
Students blast through space in this awesome arcade-style shooter. Collect advanced power-ups, charge attacks, and identify the narrator’s perspective in hundreds of questions. The game starts out simple. Students just identify whether each passage narrated from first, second, or third-person perspective. But as the levels progress, students must soon distinguish between objective, limited, and omniscient modes of narration as well. This game is mobile-friendly.
Play Viewpoint Pilot Now
Download the Viewpoint Pilot App for Free in the App Store
Poetry Cat: Figurative Language and Poetic Devices Game
Collect yarn. Avoid enemies.
Play as a cat who can climb up walls. Collect all of the yarn balls to pass each level, but beware of dogs. This game has bouncy mechanics and a fun, cartoon feel to it. Also, students will identify HUNDREDS of figurative language techniques and poetic devices as they play through the game. Students and teachers really seem to like this one. It is my most popular reading game. This game is tablet-friendly.
Play Poetry Cat Now
Download the Poetry Cat App for Free in the App Store
Super Grammar Ninja: Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure Game
Learn about sentence structure.
Journey through 5 environments. Battle the most powerful warriors in the world. Learn parts of speech and sentence structure. Super Grammar Ninja combines elements of classic platform games like Megaman and Castlevania and adds language arts instruction. It’s a winning package. Students will battle bosses and unlock secret ninja attacks. They will also answer hundreds of questions about sentence structure and the parts of speech.
Orpheus the Lyrical: Figurative Language Game
Students must guide Orpheus through the underworld to save his beloved. He charms and subdues the beasts and monsters with the sorrow of his song. He collects power-ups and unlocks abilities, and he answers hundreds of figurative language questions. This was the first reading game that I ever made, way back in 2010. If you compare it to my newer games, you can see that I’ve grown as a programmer. Nonetheless, this is still one of my most popular games. Beat the whole game and you can unlock a sidekick.
Play Orpheus the Lyrical Now
Download the Orpheus App for Free in the App Store
I hope that your students have as much fun playing these games as I did making them. I tried to do right by both the classroom and the gameroom. If you want to let me know how I did, sound off in the comments. I am continuing to develop new reading games. Next up: Context Clues Climber! Of course, I’d love to make a text structure game too. I better get back to work. Thanks for playing!
Breanna
/ May 31, 2018I love the cat game although maybe a horse game would be fair…
Mr. Morton
/ June 29, 2018I like that idea. Horse game on deck!
cheerios
/ May 22, 2018i like the cat one
aslhy
/ May 21, 2018i liked
danyelle
/ May 14, 2018it seems kinda fun but not easy
jaxon nash
/ May 11, 2018cool games
Monana
/ April 30, 2018gude gaym!
Monana
/ April 30, 2018hi, im a stoodent, my name is monana and i like dis gaym very much thank you.
issac
/ April 9, 2018make more games
Mr. Morton
/ April 9, 2018I’m working on it. Making a game takes a long time, at least for me.
Yo MAMA
/ May 17, 2018When will one be ready?
Mr. Morton
/ June 29, 2018Good question. Maybe this winter, if I actually get to making one 😀
pretty
/ March 16, 2018nice game that has been played
Anonymous
/ March 16, 2018great games
CDL
/ March 14, 2018You’ve gotta shed some light on how you created these games! This will be my summer project! Is it a template, or will I have to finally learn to program? (hehehe)
Mr. Morton
/ March 14, 2018Well, I used ImpactJS as the game engine: http://impactjs.com/
It simplifies a lot of stuff, like you won’t have to program your own runloop, entity objects, collision mechanics, etc. But you still have to learn JavaScript and create pixel art. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. 😀 Good luck!
Krejci
/ March 1, 2018My students absolutely LOVE this game! Many of them have even been playing it at home!
Mr. Morton
/ March 1, 2018Isn’t that the best?
Elroy
/ January 31, 2018Maybe we should remove the weapons from history books as well.
Cathy Malone
/ November 3, 2017You need to remove the weapons from the games so we can use them in school.
Mr. Morton
/ November 8, 2017None of the games are violent. I believe only one or two have weapons. Maybe you could use the other ones?