Studies have shown that when learners are having fun they tend to retain more information and to be more interested in the topics being taught. We feel games are a great tool for education! Games can be enjoyable to play and therefore are a great tool for reinforcing educational values, principles, and concepts. Below are a variety of games geared at High School aged learners that can be beneficial in the classroom, after school, or at home for reinforcing educational objectives.
Man Bites Dog
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Use the cards you’ve been dealt (and swapped) to make the most fantastic, most exclusive headline you can manage! Score big points by putting together cards with high point values to make outrageous headlines worthy of your favorite tabloid in Man Bites Dog!
Educational Focuses: Headline writing, parts of speech, and critical thinking.
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Fumbling Ferrets
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With a bit of quick thinking and a few choice cards you may be able to out fumble your fellow ferrets. Using the cards you're dealt and the ones you may opt to buy, you will scramble to spell the highest scoring word. All while being challenged to make a word with 3 vowels, a word that starts with a vowel, three syllable words, a four letter word worth 10 or more points, double letters, and more.
Educational Focuses: Word game, spelling, vocabulary, three syllable words, adjectives, verbs, nouns, onomatopoeia, palindrome, and quick thinking.
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Churchill
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Play as Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt in this cooperative political maneuvering game to negotiate lasting peace for the world. Tackle tough leadership issues and make the best compromises you can over the course of the ten major conferences from 1943 through the end of World War II. Players will have to decide which issues and conferences will grant them the most influence moving forward and will have to balance the risks and rewards of using their strongest cards early or late in the course of history.
Educational Focuses: Churchill (United Kingdom), Stalin (Soviet Union), Roosevelt (USA), world history, WW II, D-Day, Axis & Allied Powers, political conflicts, and negotiations.
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Dixit
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Make up a one sentence story about a surreal image unique enough for other players to pick your card, and not your opponent’s cards, in Dixit! Earn points when your card is bet on and picked. Be the first to score thirty points, or the player with the most points at the end of the game to win!
Educational Focuses: Story telling, guess work, empathy, and interpretation.
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Ecosystem
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Build the most diverse and sustainable Ecosystem you can in your twenty card grid. Remember to think about the flora and fauna needed to sustain the food web to earn the most points and build the biggest stream!
Educational Focuses: Biology, animals, environmental science, ecosystems, animal habitats, biodiversity, monocultures, waterways, and food webs.
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Apples to Apples
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Take turns playing as the active player and deciding which Thing best matches the Description you just turned over. The first player to a predetermined number of Description cards wins! Playing the other role, you’ll determine which Thing matches the Description flipped by the active player. Remember to compare Apples to Apples to win!
Educational Focuses: Analogies, vocabulary, critical thinking, and communication.
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Oliver Twist
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Steal more goods than your fellow street urchins over the course of two rounds of play. Sell them all to rascally old Fagan and avoid the coppers to win this game based on the classic novel, Oliver Twist!
Educational Focuses: Story telling, read & play, novel based, and literature.
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The New Science
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Play as one of the most famous scientists of the Scientific Revolution as you compete with your opponents to gather the most prestige to become the First President of the Royal Society. Recruit lab technicians, test hypotheses, publish your findings and keep your opponents from using your results to further their own ambitions in this new world of New Science!
Educational Focuses: Strategy, scientific revolution, renaissance, industry & manufacturing, Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Kitchener, and Leibniz.
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The Alpha
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Can you lead your pack to be the most successful hunters before winter arrives? Carefully balancing the guarantees of the near forest with the big rewards (and big risks) of the far forest or even the farmer’s land will determine who is really best at being The Alpha!
Educational Focuses: Risk & reward, Alpha & Beta characteristics, leadership, survival of the fittest, food scarcity, prisoner’s dilemma, pack dominance, resource management, animal habitats, animal characteristics, and strategy.
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Captain Sonar
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We like to refer to Captain Sonar as Battleship revamped. The game is for 2 to 8 players and is played in teams of up to 4 people. You will take on the rolls of Captain, Chief Mate, Radio Operator, and Engineer. Your goal is to sink the other team's submarine. The game can be played two different ways, either turn by turn or live fire. You will have to listen carefully, communicate effectively, and think strategically to win!
Educational Focuses: Deduction, nautical, maps & directions (North, South, East ,West), map coordinates, axis awareness (X & Y), tactile experience, and submarines warfare.
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Wordoku
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Compete with your favorite logophile in Wordoku to see who can score the most points in this crossword puzzle meets sudoku game! During each five-minute round attempt to arrange your tiles into the four-by-four grid that scores you the most points. Pay special attention to the symbols included in each row and column to balance your words and double your score! Have the highest score at the end of three rounds to be declared the Wordoku champion!
Educational Focuses: Word game, spelling, vocabulary building, word recognition, cognitive skills, social skills, memory builder, and sight words.
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Starlink
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Can you draw and guess the most constellations? Connect stars in just the right ways to create constellations to get your opponents to guess the right word in Starlink!
Educational Focuses: Differential thinking, fine motor skills, focus and attention, visual perception, creativity, art and drawing, and astronomy.
Can be combined with lessons about constellations, star facts, star dates and timeline, star classification, stellar structure, characteristics of stars, binary stars, evolution of stars, star formation, star naming, and history of observation.
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Arboretum
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Create the longest paths of beautiful trees in your very own Arboretum! Play your cards wisely and carefully arrange your rows to be the longest to score points and win the game!
Educational Focuses: Plant species, nature, environmental biology, and strategy.
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Letter Jam
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Work together to help everyone guess the letters on the secret word in front of them! Then make your own word with the letters you’ve identified in Letter Jam!
Educational Focuses: Letters, word recognition, cooperation, spelling, deduction, wordsmithing, mystery (letter/ word), vocabulary building, synonyms, antonyms, foreign language, critical thinking, process of elimination, cognitive skills.
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Codenames
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Can you guide your team to the right safehouses using only one word and one number? You’ll have to be clever to get your team to guess the right Codenames in order to win this party game!
Educational Focuses: Word association, vocabulary, critical thinking, word skills, team play, deduction, and communication.
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Hacker
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You’ll have to think like a Hacker to make your system secure and safe from cyberattacks! Players in Hacker write a program to achieve their goals, analyze the program for weaknesses, and then fix any issues to prevent a cyberattack all while learning coding, problem solving, conditional events and building their deductive reasoning skills!
Educational Focuses: Coding, problem solving, creative thinking, reasoning, conditional events, logic, STEM, visual perception, and programing.
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Before there were stars
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Even Before There Were Stars, there were storytellers. Join them and tell the story of your people in this constellation-based, story-telling game. Draft the constellation cards you need for your story and vote on your opponent’s stories! The player who earns the most star points at the end of the game wins, but the true fun of this game is the stories you create!
Educational Focuses: Story telling, descriptive writing, parts of a story, character development, plot & plot twists, peer critiques, public speaking, origins of civilization stories, creation beliefs/ stories/ myths, astronomy, constellations, imagination.
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Read and Play:
We recommend reading When the World Was Young Creation and Pourquoi Tales by Margaret Mayo |
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Read and Play:
We recommend reading In the Beginning Creation Stories from Around the World by Virginia Hamilton |
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Our Friends at Smirk & Laughter Have provided a great teaching resource for Before There Were Stars!
Check out the common core lesson plans document for grades 6-12. |
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Bosk
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Plant trees in the forest and nurture them through a year! Play wisely and earn the most points in spring when the trees are young, in summer when the forest fills to its fullest, in autumn when the squirrels come out to play and in winter when the trees act as the only shelter for their woodland friends in Bosk!
Educational Focuses: Ecology, ecosystems, environmentalism, life science, phenology, dendrology, silvology, environmental science, area control, spatial reasoning, and critical thinking.
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Ion
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In Ion: A Compound Building Game players compete to build the most numerous collection of stable ionic compounds they can manage! Extra points are awarded for completing goal compounds!
Educational Focuses: Science concepts, iconic binding, elements, atoms, charges, ions, anions, cations, noble gases, halogens, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, compound naming, creating neutrally charged compounds, transition metals, polyatomic ions, reactions, acids, and bases.
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Trekking the National Parks
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Be the first to visit as many of our country’s National Parks as you can in Trekking the National Parks! Play wisely to collect the right cards and tokens to earn the most points as you take an exciting journey across the United States!
Educational Focuses: Geography, environmental biology, history, plant species, and animal habitats.
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Quiddler
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Quiddler is a word game that challenges players to create words from the cards in their hand. The game lasts eight rounds, with three cards being dealt to each player in the first round, four cards in the second, five in the third, and so on. Each card has one or two letters on it as well as a point value. When a player can use all the cards in their hand (leaving one for a discard) then they can go out. You may play multiple words, but each word must contain at least two cards.
Educational Focuses: Spelling, vocabulary building, word recognition, using a dictionary (in case of a word challenge), math, decision making, strategic thinking, planning, quick thinking, and problem solving.
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Papillon
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Spring has sprung, birds are chirping, bees are buzzing, flowers are blooming, and caterpillars are transforming into beautiful butterflies ready to spread their wings and fly. It’ll take strategy, insight, and a gnome to build the best prize winning butterfly garden.
Educational Focuses: Butterflies, gardening, flowers, Lepidopterist, Entomologist, environmentalism, bidding, and pollination.
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Mariposas
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Play a role in the great migration of the beautiful Monarch Butterfly as they traverse North and Central America. Collect sets and play your cards to move your kaleidoscope of Mariposas around through their migration path. Make the best decisions and win the most points at the end of three rounds to be declared the Mariposas Champion!
Educational Focuses: Butterflies, environmentalism, migration, life cycle of the butterfly, extension, Lepidopterist, Entomologist, overwintering, and butterfly conservation.
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Shobu
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Shobu is a two-player abstract strategy game in which players must plan their two-part turn carefully to defeat their opponent. Who knew pushing stones would be so much fun!
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Nerd WordS: Science
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Sure you’re a smarty-pants, but how quickly can you come up with the science term (aka Nerd Word) when you’re only given a one-word hint? That’s the premise of this quick playing, science-vocabulary driven game for any group size! The science specific nature of this game makes it an easy fit for any science classroom, and a great review tool for anyone studying at home, too!
Educational Focuses: Biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, space, geology, laboratory, medical, and anatomy terminology.
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Tumblemaze
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Flip the switch and send the balls tumbling down through all of the obstacles! But be careful that you add the right piece in the perfect place or your balls won’t end up where you need them! Do you have what it takes to make it through the Tumble Maze?
Educational Focuses: Visual perception, dexterity, logic, problem solving, critical thinking, focus & attention, spatial reasoning, trial & error, and process of elimination.
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Twilight Struggle
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Twilight Struggle is about the “struggle” between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War. Think of this game as a historical “tug-of-war”, that has two superpowers vying for power, prestige, and control. The cards are all based with historical sayings, facts, events, and occurrences. Players will have to decide where to react, where to make a stand, how to allocate resources, and overall live with the cause and effect of the choice or choices you made. Will you change history, or will your focus be pulled in too many directions? Will you win in the end?
Educational Focuses: Cold War, United States (US), Soviet Union (USSR), Berlin Wall, nuclear tensions, space race, Cuban Missile Crisis, world powers, arms race, political ideologies, Vietnam, US Peace Movement, Arab-Israeli conflicts, President Kennedy (USA), Brezhnev (USSR), Panama Canal, political influence, and national /international war.
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Pandemic
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Diseases are spreading and outbreaks are occurring. You have joined a team of specialists that are determined to research, treat, and eradicate the diseases. Keep in mind though, infection rates are rising and the disease is spreading quickly. You’ll have to work together quickly because, If too much time elapses things may get out of control and a cure may become out of reach.
Educational Focuses: Biology, chemistry, Epidemiology (how disease spreads), geography, research, population impact & contamination, disease and virulence factors, outbreaks, hotspots, disease eradication, epicenters, pandemics, infection rate, epidemic, and sharing of information to treat or cure a disease.
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Space Explorers
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The Space Race between the United States (USA) and the Soviet Union (USSR) was a remarkable time in history with many far-reaching achievements in science, space exploration, communication, and technology. Space Explorers is dedicated to all the folks that helped make space travel possible and honors one of the greatest achievements in the 20th century.
Educational Focuses: History of space exploration, Space Race, Cold War, and World Powers. The Space Race's effect on the world (20th century), communication, technology, and medical advancement. USA Spacecrafts: Explorer 1, Telstar 1, Apollo 11, Gemini IV, Tiros 1, Lunar Orbiter 3, Mariner 2, Pioneer Venus 2, Voyager 1, and Skylab. USSR (Soviet Union) Spacecrafts: Sputnik 1, Sputnik 3, Vostok 1, Voskhod 2, Proton 1, Luna 9, Lunokhod 1, Venera 7, Mars 3, and Soyuz 19.
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Ecos
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Ever wonder what the Earth would look like if it was formed differently?
In Ecos, players get to be forces of nature molding a part of the world including landscapes, habitats, and animals! At its base, the game is more of an engine building type of game where players are trying to set off chain reactions to shape the world. Educational Focuses: Biology, environmental biology, meteorology,
zoology, and history. |
Periodic
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"Periodic: A Game of The Elements is a strategy board game designed around the periodic table of elements, as well as some of the most fundamental principles in chemistry that can be derived from the structure and function of the periodic table.
Players maneuver across the periodic table to collect elements to score Goal Cards, and land on element groups to score points. Players either pay energy to use multiple periodic trends to move across the table, or select just one trend and collect all the energy payed to that trend!" (Description from Publisher: Genius Games) Educational Connections: Periodic table, chemistry, elements, noble gases, halogens, atomic radaii, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, transition metals, metalloids, non-metals, post-transition metals, and atomic number.
Check out our lesson plan below!
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Lovelace & Babbage
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Play as a pioneer of early computing such as the brilliant Ada Lovelace or the marvelous Charles Babbage to program the very first computer. Each player has their own unique Subroutines and they compete to create the best personal program.
Educational Connections: Math, coding, history, programming, computer Science, engineering.
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Power Grid
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Power more cities than your opponents! Play the resource market and hope that your supply meets your customers' demand. The objective of Power Grid is to be able to supply the most cities with power at the end of the game. Economics at its finest.
Educational Connections: Geography, economic systems, allocation of scarce resources, inventions, renewable & nonrenewable resources, energy supplies, energy alternatives, science, investment, and money management & diminishing return
Check out our lesson plan below!
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13 Days
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"For Thirteen Days in 1962 the world stood at the brink of atomic destruction as the United States and Soviet Union faced off over missiles which had been placed in Cuba. Would the USSR back down and remove the missiles? Would the U.S. push forward with a full invasion or send bombers towards targets within the Soviet Union? Who would blink first?"
(Description from Publisher: Jolly Roger Games) Educational Connections: Strategy, nuclear war, Cuban Missle Crisis, Cold War, Fidel Castro, modern warfare, political, wargame, President Kennedy (USA), Primer Khrushev (soviet Union), United Nations, public opinion.
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Risk
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Risk with a twist! Surprisingly, we did not design this lesson plan for a math class. We have added a diplomacy aspect to this classic game that makes it a great conversation piece. This lesson plan can fit into any world history class.
Educational Connections: Alliances, battles, attacks, strategic thinking, planning, and decision making!
Check out our lesson plan below!
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Sushi Go!
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"Pass the sushi! In this fast-playing card game, the goal is to grab the best combination of sushi dishes as they whiz by. Score points for making the most maki rolls or for collecting a full set of sashimi. Dip your favorite nigiri in wasabi to triple its value. But be sure to leave room for dessert or else you’ll eat into your score! Gather the most points and consider yourself the sushi master!"
(Description from Publisher: Gamewright Games)
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Check out our selection of educational games for other grades: