As a first grade teacher, I am constantly looking for online resources
that are easy for my students to navigate through independently and interesting
enough to keep them engaged. Unfortunately, the free version of Pink Cat Games
is extremely limited and does not offer access to enough features to entice
people to pay for the yearly subscription. However, I would highly recommend
purchasing the $49.99 yearly subscription if you teach primary grade levels.
After purchasing the subscription, you could create a class
and add your students to your roster. Students are able to access their account
by using the link provided and clicking on their name or assigned group. The
teacher has complete control over which games the students have access to.
Games could be assigned to the whole class, small groups, or to specific
students.
Games are easy to create and edit to meet individual student
needs. First, choose a list of pre-made questions from the library, or create
your own set of questions. The library has thousands of question sets made by
other teachers that could be filtered by subject, grade level, question format,
or skill. There are questions for intermediate grade levels, but the visuals
and simplicity of the games are catered to younger students. With the Games
Subscription, you are able to upload images for your questions. The best thing
about being able to create your own questions, is that you could create a game
for ANY subject or skill.
After choosing questions, you choose
a game from hundreds of choices. Many of the games are similar, with different
themes. But, there are still a wide-variety of games that will keep the
students engaged for hours. The last step is to give the game a title and
assign it to the whole class, groups, or specific students. You could use the
same game with different question sets to meet the needs of different students,
but still have them playing the same game. There is even an option to allow
students to press the audio button to read the questions and answers, if
available.
Lastly, the data collected is
specific and easy to filter to what you are looking for. Pink Cat Games tracks
student progress and creates reports in real time. Progress Reports are made
for Class Activity, an overall view of student activity that tells when students played, how many games were played, percentage of correct answers, and amount of time played. The data is then broken down into information for each game played by each student. It shows how many times the student played the game, the most recent score for the game, the
percentage of questions answered correctly, and the amount of time spent playing the game. It goes further by providing data on In-Game Errors. It tells the date that each error occurred, the game played in which the error was made, the question
that was answered incorrectly, the incorrect answer that was chosen, and the number of attempts
made before getting the correct answer.
I have found this website to be
effective every time I have used it. I have used it as a whole class activity,
in small groups, and even as independent work for my students while I am
conducting assessments. Pink Cat Games is quickly becoming my go-to for online
games in the classroom. I love how easy it is to create and edit games, and the
data collected gives me all the information I would normally only be able to
acquire if I were sitting next to the student as they play.
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