Game-based learning produces strong performance results and engagement. Playlists help teachers manage and deploy games for their classrooms to achieve those results. They are an incredibly versatile tool that provides strategic lesson plan architecture, real-time data and control, and performance analytics.

To help teachers we’ve compiled a list of the top seven (and a half) ways teachers can use playlists with their students:

1. Introduce science content – LoL playlists can provide a great introduction to new concepts. Each game contains a significant amount of content, so students can visualize new science concepts in a fun, interactive environment before listening to a lecture or opening a textbook.

2. Mid-unit refresh – After a few days of teaching the same topic, it can start to get stale for students. Reinforce and invigorate your lessons by deploying a playlist in the middle of the unit. Keep it fresh with a little fun!

3. Homework – Looking for take-home exercises that don’t involve a worksheet? Now you can build a playlist and set it to launch at a future date, for a set period of time. Your students might even want to do their homework!

4. Monday warm-up – It’s amazing how much students can forget content over the weekend. Use games and quiz questions in Legends of Learning playlists to ease them back into the swing of learning science for the week.

5. Assess progress – One of the best features playlists offer are assessment questions. This item lets you gage student knowledge and progress anywhere in a playlist; before, after, or in between games. You will know whether students are getting the larger lesson or not in real-time.

6. Stations – If your students are rotating through stations, between labs and other activities, playlists are a perfect addition; you can build them to last as little as ten minutes. This is a good option for classrooms that do not have one-to-one device access.

7. Test Review – Study guides, jeopardy, and practice tests help students prepare for tests from many different angles. Playlists add another element, mixing engaging gameplay with strong subject matter review.

7.5. Past unit recall – In that same vein (thus, the 7.5), if your students need to review foundational concepts you taught them months ago, launch a playlist for their blast from the past! This can be particularly useful for highlighting NGSS Crosscutting Concepts (CCC), which you can read about on our blog.

You can learn more about playlists on our help site. Log in today, and create a playlist for your next lesson!

Caitlin Unterman, a middle school science teacher in Forest, VA, is one of Legends of Learning’s most active teachers. Now you can hear how Caitlin uses Legends of Learning in her classroom during a special webinar on October 23rd at 4pm EST.

She has used the platform since day one, and hasn’t looked back. Caitlin will discuss deploying games in the classroom, building playlists, test preparation, and performance analytics. Participants will learn:

1) Implementing game based learning for topic reinforcement
2) Replacing study guides with game based resources
3) Assessing content mastery through gaming

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of our strongest ambassadors. Register for Caitlin’s webinar today!

About Caitlin Unterman

Caitlin Unterman was the VAST Earth Science RISE Award winner in 2016 and Lynchburg’s Teacher of the Year in 2015. She also loves horses and owns several of her own. She is an employee of Bedford County Public Schools.

Check out this super Autumn lesson plan covering the science behind seasons! With a captivating explanation of Earth’s tilt and the help of interactive Legends of Learning games, teach your students how the seasons change. Don’t miss out on this free downloadable educational resource. Let’s dive in!

Seasons Change: Autumn Lesson Plan

Autumn is around the corner! Making this a great opportunity to delve into the science of seasons. The tilt of Earth’s axis compared to its orbit around the sun is the key to understanding why we experience winter, spring, summer, and fall.

The following is an abbreviated lesson plan, excerpted from our Eclipses and Seasons learning objective, found on the Legends of Learning platform.

Objective

Students will be able to:
1. Explain why Earth has seasons
2. Draw a model of Earth’s location during various seasons

Teacher Preparation

1) Prepare a short lecture on Earth’s tilt and seasons.

Cross-Cutting Concept Tip: Consider adding a dash of photosynthesis since diminishing autumn light triggers trees to shed their foliage.

2) Create Playlist 1, a 30-minute playlist in Legends of Learning with the following games found in the Eclipses and Seasons learning objective:

• Seasons and Eclipses Adventures
• Science Fair: Eclipse and Seasons
• Temple of Seasons

3) Create Playlist 2, a 10-minute playlist in Legends of Learning with 5 assessment questions from the Eclipses and Seasons learning objective

4) Make copies of Eclipses and Seasons Worksheet

GET THE FREE AUTUMN LESSON PLAN

Deliver A five-minute discussion on Earth’s Tilt and Seasons

Deliver a short lecture on Earth’s tilt. Take any questions before playing the games.

Launch Playlist

Directions

While playing the first game in Legends of Learning called Ms. Rose & Eclipse and Seasons, use what you learn to complete the diagrams and answer the questions below.

Seasons

Label the seasons in the Northern and Southern hemispheres at each location. Circle the correct answer:

• Question 1: It is summer for the hemisphere pointing (away from, towards) the sun.
• Question 2: It is winter for the hemisphere pointing (away from, towards) the sun.
• Question 3: When a hemisphere points towards the sun, its rays are (stronger, weaker) on that part of Earth, making it (hotter, colder).
• Question 4: When a hemisphere is pointing away from the sun, its rays are (stronger, weaker) on that part of Earth, making it (hotter, colder).

Evaluation (10 minutes)

1. Launch Playlist 2 for your students. When they finish the assessment questions, any time left is free to play!
2. Analyze student results to determine what concepts need to be a focus for reteaching.

Get more Free Lesson Plans for Educators!

• Lesson Plans: Three Clicks and Done!
• Our Solar System Lesson Plan
• The Sun, Moon, and Stars Lesson Plan
• Weather Prediction Lesson Plan

We recently published four Legends of Learning case studies from schools and projects across the country. Whether in the classroom with schools in Mississippi, New York, and Virginia, or our special eclipse case study with Cobb County, Georgia, these short videos offer insights on how Legends of Learning can work for classes.

Forest Middle School Students Play Games, Master Content

Forest Middle School students play games and review incredible amounts of content in short periods. Hear what teacher Caitlin Unterman and principal Scott Simmons experienced with students playing Legends of Learning games.

Gulfport Middle School Engages with Legendary Games

See how students in this Gulfport, Mississippi Title 1 school engage with Legends of Learning games! Our ambassador Lisianna Wilson shares her unique insights about deploying games in her classroom.

Kristen Crain on Empowering Cobb County Students to Watch the Eclipse

Forty-four middle school students from the Cobb County School District in Georgia joined Legends of Learning on August 21 on a field trip to Clemson, S.C. Kristen, one of the teachers on the trip, discusses how the experience went, including how Legends of Learning games helped prepare the students.

Legendary Learning Gameplay in Rensselaer, NY

We had the great pleasure of visiting Rensselaer Middle School, and talking with Scott Beiter about Legends of Learning in the classroom. See how the games, which include teacher and student ratings, are supporting a strong, interactive learning ecosystem.

Some teachers are asking how they can earn more coins for their game play. One way is to be an active ambassador in our Legends of Learning community (sign up or log-in).

To that end, we are happy to unveil our new incentives for the Legends of Learning Community for the 2017-18 school year. Coins earned through community actions are awarded at the end of each month. Here are the different ways you can earn coins.

In Community

• First 10 comments and replies during the 2017-8 school year = 100 coins. Another 100 coins for each successive 20 comments.
• Five original posts = 50 coins. Another 100 coins will be awarded for each successive 10 posts.

Social Sharing

In addition to the coins earned via in-product sharing, you can get more coins by linking to us in the following ways:

• Blog post about us, or an inbound link via a badge from a website you control: 500 coins
• Facebook share about Legends that tags our page on Facebook: 100 coins

Lesson Plans

We love lesson plans that include Legends of Learning games. Send us your lesson plan formatted like this, and once accepted (we peer review all student facing content), you will receive 100 coins. Send lesson plan submissions to aaron@legendsoflearning.com.

Special Missions

Game ratings: Legends of Learning is currently looking to have students rate specific games. For every game that you your class plays and rates, you will earn 60 coins. For a class of 30, that equates to two new games for playing one! If you are interested, email faye@legendsoflearning.com for a game assignment.

In our last NGSS blog, we took a closer look at the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), the standards’ mechanism for organizing science content. This blog discusses another, more abstract pillar of the NGSS’s three-dimensional learning model, crosscutting concepts (CCCs).

What Are Crosscutting Concepts?

The CCCs are ideas that apply across the entire range of DCIs, and NGSS defines seven of them:

1. 1) Patterns – Observed patterns in nature guide organization and classification and prompt questions about relationships and causes underlying them.
2. 2) Cause and Effect – Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. Deciphering causal relationships, and themechanisms by which they are mediated, is a major activity of science and engineering.
3. 3) Scale, Proportion, and Quantity – In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different size, time, and energy scales, and to recognize proportional relationships between different quantities as scales change.
4. 4) Systems and System Models – A system is an organized group of related objects or components; models can be used for understanding and predicting the behavior of systems.
5. 5) Energy and Matter – Tracking energy and matter flows, into, out of, and within systems helps one understand their system’s behavior.
6. 6) Structure and Function – The way an object is shaped or structured determines many of its properties and functions.
7. 7) Stability and Change – For both designed and natural systems, conditions that affect stability and factors that control rates of change are critical elements to consider and understand.

With CCCs, teachers can deliver new content in the context of older material taught successfully, adding continuity to the long-term science curriculum.

Legends of Learning Ambassador April T. says, “[t]here is a big push to make sure that our students are becoming comfortable identifying and explaining the SEPs and CCCs that are being presented in our different units and activities.” This push is important, but it comes with challenges.

Smithsonian Science Education Center Director Katya Vines points out that interweaving CCCs with DCIs and SEPs “will certainly be challenging to American teachers not used to this way of teaching. It will require a strong concept-based curriculum, additional teacher training, and appropriate assessment materials.”

While science curricula traditionally focus on specific content, the NGSS’s “three-dimensional” approach places importance on ideas that are more abstract and can be more tougher for students to learn, and for teachers to teach.

Getting Teachers On Board With CCCs

With these challenges in mind, making sure teachers understand how CCCs work and why they are necessary is key. The California Academy of Sciences compares the concept of CCC to a study of how expert and novice chess players organize information:

Expert chess players think about groups of pieces and the strategic moves they can make, while novices tend to focus on the individual pieces. Like the expert’s mindset, CCCs group pieces of scientific information by broader similarities to fully understand each piece’s importance.

Learning science without CCCs is more like the novice perspective, failing to consider how the different scientific principles relate to each other across the broader field of science.

Bringing CCCs To Students

The next challenge is actually teaching students. As unfamiliar as teachers may be with CCCs, students probably struggle more with abstract concepts. This makes NGSS pedagogy crucial to success. NGSS Writing Team Leader Cary Sneider has a number of tips for teaching CCCs. He recommends targeting only the CCCs that best apply to the grade being taught. Since NGSS outlines detailed performance expectations for each grade, it is fairly simple to determine which CCCs are appropriate.

Sneider continues, “the best time to introduce a crosscutting concept explicitly is after the students have used the concept in two different contexts. So, for example, after the students have studied patterns in plants and animals, and again in relation to weather, the teacher can help the students see how both topics involve patterns, and how identifying patterns helps them better understand those subjects”. This “learn by doing” approach is useful because students are best able to understand concepts when they see examples. However, it’s not only students who learn by doing; teachers do, too. The next task is finding out what teaching CCCs looks like in practice.

The Research + Practice Collaboratory published a series of worksheets for teachers that “can be used as part of a multi-component assessment tasks—or they can be used in formative assessment discussions in the classroom.” Each worksheet is full of detailed, fill-in-the-blank questions for each of the seven CCCs to apply them to any relevant subject matter. In addition, Community Resources for Science compiled a webpage with videos, presentations, NGSS publications, NSTA webinars, and a number of in-class exercises that cover CCCs as a whole, as well as each specific concept, to help educators teach them.

Review Learning Objectives By Legends of Learning

Legends of Learning’s 90 learning objectives are based on the content-based DCIs. The resources mentioned in this blog, and more from our upcoming NGSS white paper (which will be found on our resources page), help teachers bring the three-dimensional NGSS model to their classrooms.

Many of our ambassadors and friends in the education community have followed Legends of Learning on Facebook and Twitter over the past year, but complained about our lack of presence on Instagram and Pinterest. Well, those days are over!!!

You can now follow us on Instagram and Pinterest, too!

Our Instagram page will feature photo spotlights of our ambassadors, LoL staff, industry events, and case studies, as well as highlighting each of our 90 middle school science learning objectives and updates about our gaming platform.

We will also “regram” legendary posts from our followers, and may even give some teacher ambassadors the opportunity to temporarily take over the page!

On Pinterest, we have boards for Earth and Space Science, Physical Science, Life Science, as well as special topics like NGSS, last month’s total solar eclipse, and awesome inspiration from teachers.

Teachers are some of the best users on Pinterest, “pinning” everything from science labs to art projects to actual bulletin boards. The site provides an easy way to bookmark and spread bright ideas, improving classrooms everywhere.

We are excited to grow our engagement with the education community! The internet is an incredible asset, with the power to not only host resources like Legends of Learning games, but also to share valuable insights and ideas so teachers and students can reap the benefits. Join us in our mission to spread the best of education.

Follow Legends of Learning:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LegendsofLearning/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/legendlearning
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legendsoflearning/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/legendsoflearning/

Weather on the Mind: A Timely Lesson Plan for Your Science Class

With the ever-present threat of extreme events, the topic of weather is likely top of mind for your science students. Use this engaging Weather Prediction lesson plan to address this timely matter and help your students understand weather patterns and how we predict their behavior.

This lesson plan is part of our Weather Prediction learning objective and includes eight exciting games that will engage your students while learning. It’s a perfect opportunity to explore how meteorologists forecast weather events and the impact these predictions can have on our lives.

Let’s turn this moment of heightened awareness into a valuable learning experience. Jump in and explore our Weather Prediction Lesson Plan below!

Learning Objective: Weather Prediction

Objective
Students will be able to:

• Describe the four types of air masses and how they interact to form fronts.
• Explain the causes of weather associated with different fronts.
• Describe how the meeting of certain fronts can cause extreme weather events.

Time Required: 90 minutes

Materials Needed

• Teacher computer with internet access and projector
• Student computers/laptops/tablets with internet access (preferably one per student but at least enough for small groups of 3 -4 students)
• Weather Map Practice handout (attached)

Teacher Preparation

• • Create Playlist 1, a 10-minute playlist in Legends of Learning with the following game found in the Weather Prediction learning objective: Forecaster
  • Create Playlist 2, a 20-minute playlist in Legends of Learning with the following game found in the Weather Prediction learning objective: Sunshine City
  • Make copies of the Weather Map Practice handout.

Download the free Weather Prediction Lesson Plan

Engage: 15 Minutes

• The teacher will play the following videos:
  • Air Masses and Fronts.
  • Weather Information Part 2 – Air Masses and Fronts (below)
• The students will take notes in their science journals on the different types of air masses and fronts described in the two videos.
• The teacher will ask the following questions to prompt discussion in the class:
  • a) Do you ever watch the weather report on the news?
  • b) What kind of information does the reporter show?
  • c) What is the weather today? Tell me your guess about the temperature and the likelihood of rain.

Explore: 10 Minutes

• Students will sign in to Legends of Learning and enter the teacher code.
• The teacher will launch Playlist 1. 
• Students will complete Forecaster as the teacher assists students as needed.
• Stopping gameplay to address the questions asked in the game may be needed.

Explain: 20 Minutes

• 1) Students will be given the Weather Map Practice handout. The teacher should also display the map on a projector/Smartboard so that the students can see the colors on the map.
• 2) Students will answer the following questions:
  • a) What kind of weather conditions do you think are associated with the blue line with triangles on it?
  • b) Based on your observations, which states and regions may be having severe weather on this day? Give your reasons why. Oklahoma, Arizona, and California; all of those states contain an ‘L”’(which designates a low-pressure system) which typically is accompanied by stormy weather. BONUS: Newfoundland (not a state; however it contains an ‘L’)
  • c) What kind of weather would you expect where the warm and cold fronts meet in western Canada? Why? Clear to partly cloudy. Where warm and cold fronts meet is called a stationary front, and weather along a stationary front is typically calm.
• 3) The teacher will discuss the answers to the handout with the students.

Elaborate: 25 Minutes

• 1) Students will log on to The NOAA National Weather Service Just for Kids website.
• 2) The students will first click on the tab labeled Forecast Maps
• 3) The students will describe the national weather on that day by analyzing the “Today’s Forecast” tab. They will do the same for the next two days by clicking on the tabs “Tomorrow’s Forecast” and “Day 3 Forecast”, respectively.
  • a) Students will write their weather forecast for each in their science journal.
• 4) Students will then try to forecast what the weather will be on Day 4.
  • a) Students will write their weather predictions in their science journals.
• 5) Using the “Today’s Forecast” Map, students will make a hypothesis about what the weather will be like in their hometown/city for the next three days.
  • a) Students will write their predictions in their science journals.
• 6) The teacher will discuss student predictions as a whole class.
• 7) Teach will display the NOAA National Weather Service Just for Kids page and will check the accuracy of their forecasts by entering their city name or zip code in the “Customize your Weather.gov” section on the top left of the screen.
• 8) If time allows, students may proceed to the Weather Information Display icon and make their own weather maps by customizing the parameters displayed.

Evaluate: 20 Minutes

• 1) Launch Playlist 2 for students.
• 2) Students will play Sunshine City and be assessed on their ability to answer the questions provided in the game correctly.
• 3) The teacher will analyze student results to determine what concepts need to be a focus for reteaching.

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In our last NGSS blog, we compiled a list of the best content and lesson plan resources for teachers bringing the new standards to their classrooms. In this blog, we dig deeper into how the NGSS standards organize science content through Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs).

What Are DCIs?

DCIs outline the fundamental science concepts for students to learn. Along with science and engineering practices (SEP) and crosscutting concepts (CCC), they form the the three pillars of the NGSS curriculum. 

“The three dimensions work together to help students make sense of phenomena or design solutions to problems, and… develop deeper, more usable understanding of the dimensions,” writes Prof. Joe Kracjik on the NSTA Community site.

Kracjik, who directs the CREATE for STEM Institute at Michigan State University, played a leading role in writing the NGSS standards ahead of their 2013 release. To help students connect the ideas they learn throughout their science education — which Kracjik calls “integrated understanding” — the NGSS team developed a total of twelve DCIs, which represent twelve broad topics such as “Earth’s Systems.” Each DCI is broken into several subcomponents whose content increases in complexity from Kindergarten through 12th grade.

DCIs Create A Foundation Of Knowledge

By building on years of learned material, the DCI subcomponents cultivate a foundation of knowledge that students can build on. While students still learn new, increasingly advanced material in every grade, each new concept follows a logical progression from the material they have mastered over the years.

On the Legends of Learning platform, all 90 Learning Objectives across Earth and Space, Life, and Physical Sciences were derived directly from the DCI subcomponents. For example, the Biodiversity and Humans Learning Objective contains eight science games covering material from subcomponent D of the DCI, “LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity.”

Along with covering the specific content of the DCIs, our games help to accomplish key pedagogical goals of the NGSS. As Lauren Madden of Education Week points out, “Learning by doing, designing solutions, and stepping back to see how the scientific ideas are connected to other things give students a more robust understanding of content.” Studying science principles in an interactive game-based learning environment allows students to develop that understanding and retain the material they learn.

Try Out Our Online Educational Games Today!

As most teachers know, this is not a new phenomenon. Students have always responded better to hands-on learning methods. What changes over time is what those methods look like. Nature field trips, planetariums, and chemistry labs have been, and continue to be, vital interactive learning experiences for students.

The ever-growing presence of computers and tablets in the classroom opens countless doors for interactive learning experiences. Legends of Learning’s online science games present a valuable opportunity to harness the power of these technologies and spark student interest in science for every lesson.

We are happy to announce new upgrades and enhancements to our game-based learning platform with significant improvements for the new school year. New features like schedule ahead, student information system (SIS) integration and significant increases in analytic capability focus on ease of use for teachers, stronger performance data and analytics, and increased teacher playlist functionality.

When Legends of Learning launched this past spring, we committed to creating a platform that responds to educators needs. The platform now offers thousands of games and assessment items for earth and space, life and physical science classes. The changes and updates were based on feedback and requests from Legends of Learning ambassadors and teachers.

“We set out to create a platform that is built for teachers by teachers,” said Vadim Polikov, CEO of Legends of Learning. “We have an incredible community of Legends of Learning ambassadors and educators who have shared their thoughts and feedback in order to help meet their needs. From individual game feedback to district-wide features, Legends of Learning is better for it.”

Teacher Reactions to Legends of Learning Evolutions

Enhancements to Legends of Learning’s platform are based on actual teacher usage and feedback. Teachers offer feedback through the Legends of Learning Ambassador community (sign up here) and directly through the product. Teachers have responded well to the new updates.

“I was so pleased when I found Legends of Learning,” said Bailey Johnson-Hastings, science teacher at Hastings Middle School (NE). “My students love using it in the classroom to reinforce the concepts I am teaching. I appreciate how receptive and responsive Legends of Learning has always been with any feedback I have submitted. They are truly committed to creating a student-and-teacher–oriented gaming platform. It is so great to see Legends of Learning engaging with the educator community in this way.”

“I applaud Legends of Learning for their openness and interest in hearing from teachers,” said Bonnie Hohenshilt, science teacher at Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School (NJ). “The new features reflect things I was thinking would be great to have: the ability to begin your session where you last left off, a searchable playlist and the teacher’s top 10 list are great!”

Here is a list of some of the latest features:

Teacher Accounts

• Ability to add student rosters in the platform
• Enhanced playlist history, including ability to easily relaunch playlists and see student performance history and content mastery by concept
• Real-time student data on assessments using “Question Data” button on the playlist tab
• Multiple sessions per learning objective
• Content skipping: Move individual students to the next game or assessment if they are struggling
• Streamlined playlist launcher
• Dedicated teacher code: Codes are assigned to teacher instead of randomly generated
• New games and assessment questions
• Improved games with changes ranging from minor to major based on teacher feedback
• Live playlist shortcut: Switch quickly between active sessions

School and District Accounts

• Unlimited usage
• Scheduling feature: Ability to schedule playlists to launch in advance, which can be used for homework, weekend work and substitute teachers
• Curriculum alignment to Georgia (GSE) and Texas (TEKS) standards
• Rostering
• SIS integration
• School and district dashboards for administrators to view usage, performance and teacher and student analytics in real time

In addition to the new features, several bugs reported by teachers have been fixed. Further, minor technical improvements, features requested by our teacher users and usability improvements have been made.

This blog post is based off a press release issued this morning.