Can you teach grammar with video games?

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

My kids have asked to up their grammar game this year, so when we had the opportunity to review Words Rock Online from EdAlive, I jumped at it. The premise is unique: students play a video game that involves grammar activities.

Words Rock is a video game similar to Battleship. The idea is to use the directional clues to locate villainous slugs on a grid. Students can play alone or against the computer, in small basic games or larger, more advanced ones.

If playing against other people, play rotates through four people with each getting one turn. After everyone gets a turn, play changes to a grammar question. A sentence or two explains the grammatical concept, and students click on words or manipulate objects to solve the puzzle. If the student answers correctly, the player is given bonus points to use in the next round of slug finding.

My Little Man played this one. As an eighth/ninth-grader, he’s on the upper end of the recommended range for this resource. We’re also not huge fans of video games – meaning that I don’t like them, and we spend enough time with screens. BUT … as My Little Man enjoys computer games AND asked for more grammar work, I thought that this was well worth a try.

Unfortunately, we’re not good fits for Words Rock – and I’ll explain why, because it may be that you would love it!

My Little Man thought the idea of trying to capture slugs rather odd. As an outdoorsman, he loves to find and observe slugs – and the idea that they’re odd, villainous cartoons was strange to him. He just couldn’t relate to that, and it bugged him about the game.

We both thought that the single set of questions that followed a single slug turn felt light. It felt like a lot of game playing for little grammar work, especially when you have to wait through three other people’s turns in order to answer a question and then take a shot at finding a slug. The waiting while other people play makes the game move very slowly for me. I much prefer games that go quickly, and while I like strategic games, I personally get impatient while I wait for other people to take their turn. With this game, there is a lot of waiting for me.

The grammar questions cover a wide range of topics. You might be asked to identify misspelled words, find articles in sentences, or choose gerunds. That’s great in that there’s a lot of material covered, so it’s likely that your student will review needed skills – but also not so hot, because if your student needs help with grammar, it’s likely they’ll have much to learn with such a wide range of skills. With only a few sentences of instruction per section, there’s not help given if concepts are new. If the questions you’re given are too difficult, you can choose to make them easier, but this still leaves a huge potential variation in the types of questions received.

If you answer incorrectly, you are given a second chance to get the right answer and try again – but wrong answers aren’t identified and there’s no help offered. Those are both key components for learning. If you don’t give the correct answer on the second try, the game moves on – and you never learn what you answered incorrectly or why. I think this is a big problem: if there’s no

I would have liked to see continuity between skills. Maybe there could be a game where all of the questions are about spelling, or word type, or word usage. Maybe students could choose the type of skill they need to practice so that they can improve.

The program also includes a dashboard for teachers and parents. There you can print out a variety of reports that provide information about student learning.

Students who love video games or screen time will definitely benefit more from Words Rock Online. Being younger might help, too – but I think this program is definitely more beneficial as a fun-type game, used in free time or for review, than for necessary learning.

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