Good place to find educational games for student practice of skills.
Community Review for Game Classroom
My Take
The major focus of this site is a clearinghouse of games that allow skills practice for students in grades K-6. The games are grouped in two categories- Math and Language Arts. The teacher can filter the games by grade level to find appropriate content. I have used several of the games with my students. Some games are better than others, so I would highly suggest trying the games before you assign them to students. Many have good quality content, but there is a lot of wait-time for the game to load or reset. In many of the games the player can choose a level (easy/medium/hard or slow/medium/fast) to accommodate processing times. I feel that many of these games would be great for special education students because of the repetition.
The site also includes three other types of resources for teachers- videos, lessons and worksheets. There are not many videos listed- there are certainly many better resources for finding educational videos. The video section has many more math videos than language arts videos. The lessons section is pretty good. Many of the lessons are right on the Game Classroom site itself and those are indicated by the words "Game Classroom" at the end of the lesson title. These lessons may include sample problems, learning tips, online resources, extra help problems, newsletters, and related games found on the site. Some of the lessons are links to other sites where the lesson is listed out. Lastly, the worksheet section is nothing special. There are limited topics and some of the links do not work- you will have to copy and paste the URL into a new tab to get to it. I have had more luck just googling what I am looking for.
How I Use It
If you are looking to reinforce some skills that have been previously taught and want a game format for your students, this is a good resource to find some good games. The games are repetitive practice for those that need it. This site may be a good place to send kids when they finish their work early- they can work on the skills they are lacking- good for differentiated instruction. Another possibility I would suggest is to have students work independently when there is a substitute teacher, or unforeseen circumstances come up in which students have time for non-instructional activities. Other than that, the videos, lessons and worksheet sections are kind of lacking.