Mind Games

Mind Games is a website that offers a variety of games to challenge our minds. The different types of games include brain games, math games, puzzle games, word games, sudoku puzzles, and memory games. To practice one's English, you can play the games featured in word games category. You can practice your spelling and vocabulary by playing these games.

An example of the word games this website offers is the Word Wipe. This game, like the other games is easy to play. You just need to follow the simple instructions on the screen. However, as you advance further and your rankings increase, so will your level. The complexity of the game starts here. The higher your level is, the more complex the challenges would be. For this game, the instructions are simple, no matter how high your level is. You are required to join adjacent letters to form words and a time limit would be assigned. You need to create as many word as you can within that time limit. The more words you are able to create, the higher your mark would be and the higher your mark is, the more likely for you to advance a level higher.

This website benefits both the teachers and students. In English classes, for example, as a side activity to gain the students' attention again after a lengthy lesson, the teacher can assign them to play these word games to test their spelling and vocabulary. As the students play the game, the teacher can walk around the class and monitor their progress and give commentaries where it is due. This can help the students to relax and enjoy for a brief moment all the while gaining something from that period of time they spent resting.

This tool is indeed beneficial for ESL teachers as they provide a more interactive approach than the traditional method of teaching. In a traditional classroom, the teacher is the dominant figure and the students would only listen majority of the time. By using this website, teachers would be able to initiate interaction in the classroom, be it among the students or between the students and the teacher, making it more lively like how a language classroom should be This is because, the games provided on this website can be played both individually or in a team. Learners differ in their method of acquiring knowledge. Some learners are more visual while some are more auditory. The games in this website have both of those features incorporated into them. While there is no method that could cater to the needs of every students in one classroom, the many interactive, interesting features on this website could at least help the learners learn in their own way without falling behind their other classmates.

You do not need to sign up or create an account to access the games. It is also free to use for everyone.

ESL Games+

ESL Games Plus or ESL Games+ is an online platform that offers interactive games for learning and teaching of English as a Second Language. The games can only be played online and are most suitable to be used in an ESL classroom to make it more interesting. This website offers a variety of games ranging from those that cover vocabulary, grammar, spelling, to sentences.

There are seven buttons on display at the top of this website - the home button, games button, topics button, quizzes button, videos button, printables button and mobile button. Each of these button will direct you to the chosen section. If you click on the home button, the main page will be on display. On the main page, you can find the description of this website by the developers themselves. You can also browse the popular games section and the popular videos section at the left side of the platform, with the former being on the upper side and the latter on the lower side. You can also identify the different types of games they offer by reading the descriptions of the games that are displayed on the main page.

Next, if you click on the games button, the page that you will be directed to would display the different types of games they have to offer, with each of them sorted into their specific types. Some of the games are classroom games, memory games, sentence monkey (to practice constructing sentences), spelling games, and board games.

The topics button will give you an overview of what kind of topics are available on this website. For example, if they want to focus on verbs they can click on the topics button to see if it is there. It is, in fact, included in one of the topics on this online platform. There is also the quiz button that can direct you to the exercises that you can do to practice your English.

Other than that, there is the videos button that will give you access to the ESL videos. These videos can help you learn more about the English language by using both visual and auditory aids, which makes it beneficial both teachers and learners of ESL. The printables button allows you to print out the interesting worksheets such as crossword puzzles, word search puzzles, and flash cards. The mobile button will direct you to the links if you want to play the games on mobile.

This tool is indeed beneficial for ESL teachers as they provide a more interactive approach than the traditional method of teaching. In a traditional classroom, the teacher is the dominant figure and the students would only listen majority of the time. By using this website, teachers would be able to initiate interaction in the classroom, be it among the students or between the students and the teacher, making it more lively like how a language classroom should be This is because, the games provided on this website can be played both individually or in a team.

This website not only benefits the teachers but the learners as well. Learners differ in their method of acquiring knowledge. Some learners are more visual while some are more auditory. The games in this website have both of those features incorporated into them. While there is no method that could cater to the needs of every students in one classroom, the many interactive, interesting features on this website could at least help the learners learn in their own way without falling behind their other classmates. This tool can also help them be more cooperative in class, develop team work and improve their self-confidence as the games can be played in teams as well.

You do not need to sign up or create an account to access the games, quizzes and puzzles. It is also free to use for everyone. I will be showing the guidelines on getting started with the tool in the form of a self-made video below.

Original Video

YouTube Video

Tinycards

Tinycards is an online platform that enables you to create interactive flash cards to help you study. You can hear the correct pronunciation, provide visuals, and discover new elements as you progress. This tool offers a new and fun way to prepare for your upcoming tests and memorize vocabularies with all of its amazing, interactive features. The flash card is equipped with spaced repetition and other smart learning techniques to help you in memorizing. You can create your own cards or choose from the ready-made ones on the website, just search for the topics that you are interested in learning. It is also easy to use and can be accessed by anyone, students or teachers alike, for free.

The main feature of this website is, of course, the flash cards. You can create your own flash cards by clicking on the 'Create' button on the upper left corner of this website. After creating your own cards, you can view it by clicking on your profile.

Next, click on the topic that you want to study, it will direct you to this page:

As you can see, there are two sections there. The lesson section and the cards section. The lesson section is for when you want to do some exercises on the topic. It will auto-generate questions based on the contents that you provided in your flashcards. If you want to study first, you can simply click on the cards button to view the contents before you actually get started on the lesson.

This tool can be used by both the teachers and the students. It is indeed beneficial for a teacher to implement it in the classroom as they can encourage the students to think more creatively on how to study. Since this website offers a variety of studying tools, the teacher can introduce them to the students so that they can use it in their future learning sessions, be it individually or in a group. It will create a more fun classroom that allows the students to be motivated to learn. It also enables the teacher to approach and understand the students in a new way that is different from the one in traditional classrooms.

Students could help improve their grades by using this tool. This is because this tool allows students access to a variety of features that would be helpful for them in all aspects of learning, such as the correct pronunciation, spelling, so on and so forth. They can use this tool to help them study the many terminologies that they are supposed to remember as well using the flash card feature available on this website. Students would feel more interested in learning if tools like this is implemented in the classroom. This is due to the fact that this website promote creative thinking by applying graphics and many other interesting visual and auditory aids that can attract the students' attention in class.

Below is a self-made video on the guidelines of how to get started in using this tool:

Original Video

YouTube Video

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