How cool to see this piece from Stacey Pattenaude and Samantha Sanchez (listen to this podcast with Samantha), two amazing educators I continue to learn from. They first presented on this topic at the TCEA Area 20 event, hosted by Northside ISD in San Antonio, Texas. I missed that presentation, but they revisited the topic at the TCEA 2025 Convention and Exposition. Samantha mentions it in her podcast interview (or maybe, we discussed it, I forget).

Be sure to read this, as well as other gamification and game-based approaches:

Discover the research behind gamification and learn how to utilize it in your writing-focused lessons with these fun tools and ideas! “When a person is captivated, they don’t need to be held captive.” This insightful quote by Michael Matera and John Meehan, co-creators of EMC², perfectly captures the power of gamification in education. Gamification describes the use of game elements such as points, competition, and rules of play in non-game contexts offers an engaging approach to capturing student attention in the classroom. It’s not necessarily about making students play games, but rather about harnessing the features of games that children love so much to create a more interactive way to motivate learners. Educators can easily incorporate gamification into everyday activities and reap the benefits!

Read more.

I used Napkin.AI to create this quick summary of the tools they discuss at length in their piece: