Significantly, interactive online games for high school students serve to cultivate a range of abilities that will be valuable for them both inside and beyond the classroom.
Also, are you looking for strategies to encourage students to learn at their best? Well, you’ve just landed on the right page. Keep reading and get insights on how you maintain engagement in your classroom!
Photo by Julia M Cameron
I have dug into the chosen assortment of best-rated and highly recommended free interactive online games for high school. Each game is fascinating and comprehensive, giving experiences likely to challenge students to improve their skills and increase their academic performance.
Check out each one below to witness its relevance to the breadth of the K-12 Curriculum subject areas that range from physics to history, socio-emotional learning, and many other types of subjects.
8 Best Interactive Online Games for High School
1. Spaceteam ESL
Practicing vocabulary in English has never been more fun than it is with this fun and interactive game. Quite a great resource for ELLs, this online interactive game really magnifies collaboration and great fun.
I find it helpful for countries with ELLs or non-native speakers of English. It’s super practical and less intimidating for students to learn English words and master their pronunciation.
As you help your students improve their word pronunciation and listening abilities as life skills, you can seek assistance from this online game. With the game’s features and additional resources, it’s possible for students to practice pronunciation that can make them more confident in using the English language.
Before exposing your students to the game, you can offer practice time without using a device, just download the word list in Excel format from the Spaceteam ESL page. Then, give it to your students for mastery.
This online ESL game will help your students overcome their reluctance of speaking English by engaging them in the fascinating game of flying a spaceship. What’s thrilling about it? Do you think it’s just as easy as 123 to fly a spaceship?
Well, it can be very challenging when instructions are interchanged on each other’s phones or devices. Your students must communicate and work together to survive. Isn’t it fun? But everything is adaptable to the student’s level of fluency.
Moreover, the English vocabulary practice is a great way for students to hone their pronunciation and listening abilities in a fun, collaborative, engaging, and real-world situation.
Get it now on: Google Play Store or App Store.
2. Little Alchemy 2
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Little_Alchemy.png
To help students develop their science, creativity, and critical thinking skills, then the Little Alchemy 2 is the fittest.
Suitable for grades 6-12, this game-based learning app plays a fun, discovery-based puzzler that challenges your students’ chemistry skills.
With Little Alchemy 2, students can learn via experience and discovery. Although the game is meant for entertainment purposes, it has the potential to lead to subject learning if you, as the teacher, are creative enough to make integrations. You may, for example, utilize Little Alchemy 2 to educate students about real-world versus game-based chemistry.
Students’ ingenuity, creativity, and critical thinking will be required as the game becomes increasingly challenging. As students combine elements to make creations, they will develop patience and improve their ability to manage their anger or strong emotions when they see how elements gradually combine successfully.
Through the game’s open sandbox, students have the freedom to experiment with innovative and sometimes amusing combinations as they mix and match different elements and parts. So how can it be more challenging? It’s when students consider more complicated options.
However, more structured lessons or topics will be left to your creativity as a teacher as well. Students’ tenacity and creative thought will be challenged to do better in this game.
It’s free and you can visit their website here.
3. PowerPoint Games
To make your online classes interactive or even in your in-person interactions, you can make use of Free PowerPoint Games and PowerPoint Game Templates.
If you’re using Zoom, Google Meet, or other online web conferencing platforms, you can take advantage of editable PowerPoint Games by adding your questions to create interactive review activities and quizzes.
You can review previous lessons with your students in an engaging manner making them more excited about learning. The Top Five Quiz, for example, is an incredible ESL PowerPoint Game that you can use for brief recall activities not just on vocabulary development but also in other content you have.
For the Top Five Quiz templates, click here.
4. Quizizz
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Here’s another interactive online game for high school that can also be used in a variety of settings in the classroom.
Through straightforward quiz-show-style evaluations, students are helped to remember knowledge and prepare for standard examinations in the future.
To create in-depth and interactive learning experiences for your students, you can create quizzes that essentially hit targeted learning objectives.
In order to quickly assess where your students need more enhancement, you may build a quiz or just allow your students to take the current quiz or grab one and make the necessary changes to it.
Furthermore, this interactive online gaming app allows you to include audio and visual components, as well as meaningful questions that will assist students to have a full grasp of the content.
This gaming app also provides you and the parents as well with valuable information as to the level of understanding of the students that can be used as the basis for modification of learning tasks.
As per my experience, the class leaderboards provide a fun way for my students to track their own progress. Plus, the variety of questions you customize adds up to the challenge that makes the quiz really fun and interesting. Above all, the use of audio and video elements amplifies the whole learning experience.
Visit their website now and sign up for free.
5. Kahoot
https://www.flickr.com/photos/info_grrl/15055177180
To make your students interactive while being competitive, you can make use of the Kahoot app.
Kahoot offers competition and learning which are kept alive with a fast tempo, thrilling music, and rapid scoreboards.
Enhancing learning with Kahoot is really fun and it is a sure thing. While I used it with my students both online and in-person learning, my students really enjoyed the challenge and were inspired to invent their own versions of the game.
When it comes to learning, Kahoot makes it fun and exciting, whether you’re preparing your students for quarterly assessment of elevated tests, reviewing knowledge, or even recognizing student development and accomplishment.
Kahoot can definitely raise the bar on your lesson ideas as it increases communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.
You can instantly turn to Kahoot to administer short and lively quizzes and reviews. If you’re not able to create a quiz, you can quickly access millions of ready-made quizzes to enjoy and customize.
To make your lessons awesome, sign up here.
6. Minecraft Education Edition
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Here’s another terrific tool for teaching and learning. If you are to optimize engagement, the Minecraft Education Edition is a good catch for significant enhancements to your content. Who wouldn’t get excited about the magical “M”?
This interactive online game gives you greater access to an effective tool for increasing student learning and enhancing collaboration and critical thinking than you have ever had before.
The Minecraft Education Edition is a game-based learning platform that provides you with lesson plans and downloadable worlds to assist you to integrate games into the classroom effectively. It encourages creativity, cooperation, and problem-solving in a virtual setting.
Additionally, the Minecraft Professional Learning Community is another excellent option where you will learn from other teachers.
You can connect and collaborate with other educators, post and share lesson plans and participate in conversations. Bookmark your favorite resources for future use and earn badges by participating in these activities on the Minecraft website.
In this game, students express themselves creatively in a virtual environment. The sandbox approach allows students to explore freely, giving them the freedom to experiment, build, and make errors while remaining under your guidance and supervision.
To enhance student learning, communication, and collaboration, get it now on Google Play or download it from the App Store.
7. Geoguessr
With this gaming app, your students will surely enjoy learning about Social Studies and Geography. This will engage the students to think critically and analyze the characteristics of a location. Also, it stimulates the students to explore the world.
Let your students enjoy themselves while discovering the world. Make them analyze and guess. Your students will definitely get excited as they estimate their position on the global map using the clues scattered across the world from a street-view perspective. This is how this Geography game works.
You can use Geoguessr as an enrichment task in your Social Studies or Geography classes or as a critical thinking task for other subject areas. Let them study their surroundings and guess where they are. It’s fun and educational.
Interestingly, Geoguessr can be played for free. However, a pro account is available to unlock more features and unlimited plays.
8. GimKit
Suitable for all subjects, GimKit can keep students engaged. Built by a 16-year-old Josh Feinsilber, a high school student from Seattle, GimKit is an educational game that can make instruction fun and exciting.
Questions are answered by students using their own devices and at their own leisure. Each student will be exposed to questions numerous times during the course of a Kit, ensuring that they understand them and achieve mastery. Cool for review and remote learning.
A fun online game that increases competitiveness, GimKit is one of the EdTech tools I use to engage students in my online learning activities and tutorials. Also, GimKit serves as a great drill tool and a pleasant exercise for me.
What’s most exciting about it? Students can earn in-game cash when they are able to answer questions correctly. This gives them the privilege to purchase upgrades and powerups that are tailored to their own abilities. There are millions of possible combinations to choose from, so students won’t get bored but become more competitive instead.
Capable of being utilized outside the classroom as well, GamKit can be given to students as an assignment. My students adore it and assignments are instantly graded for you on the go.
Give it a try. Do it here.
Conclusion
The interactive online games for high school suggested above are fun that helps you bridge the gap between you and your students who can play them in the comfort of their homes. These are great aids in teaching and technology integration ideas that make the virtual learning space lively and engaging.
Start your first game and watch as your students become more involved than they have ever been. Witness how their engagement soars and how their performance improves!
Which online educational games do you enjoy playing the most or can you best recommend? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.