Unlock the Power of Legends of Learning: Tips and Tricks for Teachers

As educators navigate the ever-evolving landscape of educational technology, Legends of Learning emerges as a powerful tool to engage students and reinforce learning. This article provides a comprehensive guide to maximizing the platform's potential, drawing upon user feedback and best practices to help teachers create a legendary learning experience for their students.

Combating Tech Fatigue with Engaging Learning

The end of the school year often brings with it tech fatigue, a feeling of overwhelm from the multitude of technological options available. While the list of problems with technology in the classroom is real - connection issues, forgotten passwords, too many platforms, ineffective or outdated materials, broken or lack of devices - Legends of Learning offers a solution by providing engaging, curriculum-aligned games that can re-ignite students' passion for learning. For students, technology can be a way to get their energy out with a brain break, collaborate with each other, and learn or practice new information.

Leveraging 5E Lesson Plans for Effective Instruction

Legends of Learning understands that lesson planning can be strenuous and time-consuming. That's why the platform offers 5E lesson plans for most math and science topics. These lesson plans follow the 5E Method-meaning they each have a section that guides students to engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate.

Even if you have a pre-set district-provided curriculum to follow, these lesson plans can be valuable. There may be units that lack hands-on, engaging resources for your students, or students may still be struggling to grasp the concepts. For upgraded, premium accounts, start with the Lesson Plan before you pick a Legends game. Since the lesson plans are split into different sections based on the 5E model, you can pick and choose which portions of the lesson you’d like to use with your students. If you don't have time for the video and discussion component provided in the Elaborate section of a lesson, that's no problem! These lessons are also perfect for substitute teachers.

To find a lesson, simply search for the topic or standard you're teaching. The search results will show all lessons aligned to that topic or standard. You can narrow down the results even further by selecting the grade band and/or subject. Click the purple View icon to open the lesson.

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Upgrading to Premium for Enhanced Features

Go beyond the ordinary with Legends of Learning’s premium accounts. Elevate your instruction with access to a complete library of 5E lesson plans, powerful reporting tools, seamless grade pass-back to various LMS platforms, and Math Basecamp, our innovative math fluency program.

Preparing for a New School Year

Welcome back to another Legendary school year! Getting your classes re-engaged in Legends of Learning’s math and science games are a great way to combat the dreaded summer learning loss. Ready to clear out your old rosters and get your new students set up?

You have two options:

Option 1: Use our Clean Slate banner to clear out your students in one click!
Option 2: Don’t see the Clean Slate banner? Never fear…we have a backup method for you!

From their own accounts, co-teachers can view your student list, assignments, and data. If you need more information on how to add co-teachers and the access they receive, reach out to Legends of Learning support. Either way, when your assignment is just right, celebrate by sharing it with your teammates to assign to their class.

Understanding the Awakening Experience

When the new Awakening experience rolled out last year, there was a lot of excitement for Beastie battles and the immersive world students could interact with. Now, when students complete an assignment and continue with Free Play, they will enter into the Awakening School.

In the Awakening School, students can:

Learn math factor sets on the interactive grid: jump on a number and the two correlating numbers highlight.
Access science mini-games from the Game Station.
Play the Physics Toolbox: interactively stack elements to learn about forces and motion.

All mini-games, Beastie battles, and interactive elements provide students with the opportunity to win coins. This is a great way to reward students for their efforts. So, Teacher Heroes, rest easy knowing that your students are now immersed in fun learning experiences, even when they’re done playing your assignment.

Crafting Effective Substitute Plans with Legends of Learning

It can be gut-wrenching to even think about crafting those dreaded sub plans. The time it takes to write down everything you do each day and to prep the materials only to find all those beautifully labeled piles untouched. Or to find their independent work was completed as a class. Or half the class’ papers were turned in and the other half missing entirely. You get it. You’ve lived it. You dread it.

Here's how to make sub plans useful:

Compile everything you need to leave for a sub once! A written plan only goes so far. Subs need materials! Passes to the nurse, stickers, candy (if your school allows), a pen, post-it reminders of the schedule.
The Skeleton Schedule - as you write your daily schedule, fill in the bones of what each class entails. Bell ringers, hooks, whole group lesson time, independent work and rotations, and exit tickets.
The Meat - These are the assignments. What your students will be doing when you are away.

A great option for "the meat" is Legends of Learning teacher-created resources. These resources are sorted by subject, grade and standard. You can assign these at any time without running back and forth from the copier at 3:30 the day before an absence or sending your team materials for them to prep when you wake up sick as a dog one morning!

Read also: Features of Legends of Learning

With Legends, you build assignments that align with the standards you are teaching. With games to engage the fun in students and standards based questioning to engage their thinking, students will continue learning, even in your absence. The best part, Legends logs student activity and performance.

Decoding Legends of Learning Games

You’ll often see games described as Instructional, Quiz, or Simulation. Instructional games offer a more straightforward interaction to learn topics. Quiz games focus on assessing a student’s knowledge about a topic, based on prior teaching of it. Games can be filtered by grade level offering when going through the steps to create an assignment and find games. When viewing an individual game, the grade level(s) best suited for that game, based on content material within the game.

These icons help advise what features the game has:

Save-state is available. On all games starting, games will have various “save-states” through it so that a student doesn’t have to start from the beginning in case the internet dropped out, the class period was over, or even if they just got stuck.
The game is available with a Spanish translation.
Text-to-speech (a.k.a. reading game instructions and prompts out loud to students) is possible.

You can also try games (aka play them) or watch a video of them being played.

Understanding the Platform's Evolution

Legends of Learning has come a long way. Teachers who used Legends in the early days may remember only middle school science content available. Assignments basically had to be made in “real-time”-meaning they had to be created, assigned and played all within a max of 60 minutes or the assignment would end and kick students out.

Now teachers can have saved drafts and queued assignments, edit or duplicate an assignment, try an assignment as student and share an assignment with a co-teacher so they can plan as needed before pushing games out. Assignment length, once at 60 minutes access, can now be set at six months, if teachers wanted to!

Several years later, Legends now offers thousands of games covering over 500 topics aligned to over 21 national and state standards in both math and science topics. Made for students in both elementary and middle school, more than half the games are now available with Spanish translation.

Teachers can now preview game play via video or trial-play games, as well!

Over the years, Legends has been focused on making the platform a more rigorous and easier platform to use. Compared to the early days, teachers and students find that our games now load at near “lightning-speeds.” Game content is more aligned to the targeted age group, both in terms of the standard-aligned content, as well as the game context and mechanics.

The experience for premium users is even better. Upgraded schools and districts have access to a wide range of Lesson Plans that are active, engaging, and integrate games, including 5E plans for science. They can also unlock full reporting data at the student and total class level. Teachers love seeing the specific questions asked and evaluating how the overall class performed to make decisions on future tasks and assignments…not to mention passing grades back via LMS! Lastly as the cherry on top for premium users, they have unlimited access to Legends.

Recognizing Awards and Achievements

Legends of Learning has earned the Best Educational Game CODiE award from SIIA. This award recognizes the platform's excellence in several key areas:

Assessment: The extent to which the assessment tools are useful and functional for the user.
Platform flexibility: Whether the solution is optimized to be used on various platforms (e.g.
Reports: How well system reports provide actionable information to the student, the teacher, administrators, and parents.
User experience: How well the elements of game play create a compelling experience that is easy to use.

Games can be differentiated, language can be changed to Spanish, and text-to-speech is provided, as well. Mini-lessons allow the student to feel accomplished and not falling behind classmates as they are challenging and provide small victories along the way. Legends of Learning is very engaging. The "student view" option is invaluable, saving teachers time by allowing them to troubleshoot technical issues from the student's perspective. Data and the ability to differentiate within the program to meet student needs is a definite strength.

Celebrating Innovation and Collaboration

“We are thrilled to announce the winners of the “Games for All” Game Design Challenge,” said Lindsay Buckel, Manager of Strategy at Legends of Learning. “Our judges were especially impressed by the creative, original, and innovative approaches students utilized to cultivate inclusion among players in a collaborative way. We greatly appreciate the effort, attention to detail, and imagination all participants put into their submissions.

Utilizing Quick Play for Efficient Game Selection

With Quick Play, getting games in front of your students is faster and easier than ever! This is great for those who prefer not to spend time previewing and picking games! Once you click Quick Play, simply click through the prompts for the subject, topic, etc. you would like to focus on. Instructional assignments include our highest-rated instructional game within the topic you choose.

Navigating the Learning Universe: Tips for Teachers

With over 2,000 games in the Learning Universe, the open world of Awakening, and the multitude of math facts in Math Basecamp - Legends of Learning is truly expansive. Here are some tips to navigate the platform effectively:

Archiving past students: To start the year with a clean slate, you can archive your past students and groups.
Adding new students: Students can create their own usernames when signing up to join an assignment that you have assigned.
Find the right games for your assignments by using filters: Utilize filters to narrow your search. We recommend trying three of our filters first - grade level, iPad compatibility, and Spanish availability.
Add games to draft assignments:
Assigning Awakening focus areas: You can assign different focus areas for students in Awakening based on the lessons you are teaching.
Adding videos to assignments: Along with the games and assessments in your assignments, you can add videos from Vimeo and YouTube too. Use the videos as a pre-teaching tool before students play a game!
Ensure students have unnecessary tabs closed: Encourage your students to close the other tabs they may have open outside of Legends of Learning.
Getting access to support: You can always reach out to our best-in-class support team.
Rate and review our games: We are always releasing new games, updating games, and removing those that are outdated or underperforming.
Create your own teacher avatar: You can create your very own teacher avatar in Awakening.

Decoding Awakening Terminology

Here is a list of any Awakening-related terms and what they mean to help you get the most out of your Awakening experience.

Achievements: This is the list of rewards that you can earn or have earned by completing certain tasks within Awakening.
AP Wing Icon: This allows you to access The Wilds by subscribing to an Adventure Pass.
Arcade Room: You will be able to access mini-games in this location. The games you see in the arcade room are based on your selected subject and the grade level in your account.
Backpack Icon: This allows you to change your avatar, see how many coins you have collected, and store all purchased items such as accessories, dance moves, and furniture. You can edit your avatar's name via your backpack as well.
Beastie: Beasties are creatures that you will use in battles. Beasties can be found roaming around, and they are hatched from different types of eggs. Once you have collected beasties, you can click on the Paw icon in your navigation menu in order to view them.
Beastie Battle: Battles serve as an educational component within Awakening. When you are playing Awakening independently outside of teacher assignments, you will encounter questions based on your grade level and the subject area you have chosen in your account.
Beastie Echoes: Echoes are collected and used to Train or Evolve your Beasties. Earn Echoes through Loot Boxes, answering questions in the Hall of Beasties, or winning battles against Shadow or Wild Beasties.
Beastie Eggs: Eggs contain new beasties that can be added to your squad. There are 4 different types of eggs within Awakening that you can collect. Eggs must be hatched to be added to your squad. Eggs can be gifted to you by opponents, and you can find eggs while exploring within Awakening after getting your first Starter Egg.
Beastly Pizza: Refers to the Beastly Pizza Truck game that you can play with a team of 3 or more players to collect ingredients to build a delicious pizza for one of your beasties.
Coins: You may earn coins at the end of a battle, when you complete different tasks in Awakening, and when you purchase an Adventure Pass.
Effects: Effects are earned when opening a Loot Box. These are limited-time enhancements to give your avatar a fresh new look.
Friends Icon: This allows you to see all the friends on your Friends List, your Friend Code, and any alerts sent from other players who want to become friends.
Friends List: Your Friend List consists of friends you have added or friends that have added you that you can play with and visit within Awakening.
Gondola: This cable car transports you back and forth between the Awakening School and the Town.
Hatchery: The Hatchery is located in the Awakening Academy. Within the Hatchery, you can place your Beastie Eggs in the nest and incubate them until they are ready to hatch.
Loot Boxes: Rewards you earn for completing your teacher assignment, or complete a game or video in the classroom Game Stations, Arcade, or from Tuto.
Map Icon: This allows you to travel to different areas including the Town, the Arcade Room, The Wilds, and your House.
Nest: A nest is where you place your eggs to help your beasties develop so that you can hatch them. Nests are located within the Awakening School and outside your home within the Awakening Town.
Smiley Face Icon: This lets you show off your cool moves. New dance moves can be purchased in the Town by the Town's stage.
Sundrops: Premium currency used to unlock special features in Awakening. Convert your coins to Sundrops using the Sunforge located in the Hatchery.
Squad: These are the five besties that you will use in your battles. If you have collected more than 5 beasties, you can always change or remove the beasties in your squad.
The Salon: Navigate to this location to change your avatar's facial features and hairstyle.
The Town: This is where you go after school hours to have fun and battle computer avatars. In this location, you can find more beasties and beastie eggs and learn along the way!
The Quizzler: Refers to The Quizzer Game Show which can be played in the School and the Town. If you play, you win really cool prizes.
The Wilds: The Wilds is an area outside the Town that allows you to interact with more people and collect more beasties. An Adventure Pass will need to be purchased to access this.
Treats: Treats are earned when opening a Loot Box.

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