In Part 1 of this blog, we introduced you to Teach Your Monster and discussed applying the SAMR Model and the Triple E Framework to using it in your instruction. Today’s post offers detailed instructions for using this tool and shares classroom ideas.
In case you missed it, Teach Your Monster is an award-winning educational platform where children create personalized monster characters and embark on magical quests to develop literacy, math, and nutrition skills. The site offers four games that help students learn about phonics and early reading, basic arithmetic, and healthy food choices. Available free on the web without advertisements, this Usborne Foundation creation cleverly disguises learning as play and features comprehensive teacher resources.
Here’s an in-depth look at how to use Teach Your Monster:
As you arrive at the site, click Get Started or Play now for free to create your account.
The next step asks if you are doing a school or home sign-up (both are free). If you already have an account, click Login.
You can create your adult account using an email address or a Google or Apple account. You will add students to your account so they don’t need to create their own.
Now you can add students by clicking on the Players tab and then clicking + Add player. We suggest not using real names, but rather ID numbers or nicknames. This is also the area where you can see the stats.
Under Stats, you can click to view the games that keep track of student progress. Teach Your Adventurous Eating is the only game that doesn’t keep track of stats. The bottom image shows each player, their time on the game, and their progression percentage. You can download all of the stats as CSV if desired.
As previously mentioned, the games are available free on the web and in many of the most popular app stores. This blog post focuses on the web version, but the app version is very similar.
Under the Games tab, you can click what you would like to play first. When you get to the first game, you will be prompted to create a monster by choosing the face shape, eyes, teeth, and other features, and this same monster will stay with you throughout the games.
Now, let’s look at each of the four games. Teach Your Monster to Read highlights letter sounds, combinations, and basic literacy skills. This game includes several pre-reading strategies, such as letter recognition. There are three stages of difficulty. The first stage helps students learn letters and sounds by presenting them with 6 tricky words to master. Stage two has students learn 18 letter-sound combinations, with lots of blending and segmenting practice. At this stage, students are presented with 18 tricky words. The third stage introduces students to alternative spellings and sounds, such as the “I” sound in fin vs find.
This example from the game helps students recognize the letter S and the sound it makes.
Along the journey, students choose prizes for their monster after they master a letter.
Now, we will look at the second game, Teach Your Monster Reading for Fun. In this game, students explore a magical kingdom and earn more than 70 ebooks as they obtain points from games. The ebooks can be read or played as audiobooks by clicking the text.
The goal of this game is to complete challenges to stop a book-eating goblin.
The game provides students scaffolds to help them find the goblin, complete the challenges, and read the books.
When you successfully find the goblin and complete the challenge, you can choose from three free ebooks.
As students read each book, they can click on the text box to have it read aloud as an audiobook.
The next game, Teach Your Monster Number Skills, offers minigames for practicing counting, subitizing (similar to estimation), addition, subtraction, number bonds, seriation, and more. Many feature interactive manipulatives!
The Number Skills game gives players three level options: Starter, Confident, and Experienced.
The Starter level has students find matching numbers. For example, the game below puts your monster in a numbered race car and asks you to find other vehicles with the same number of dots as the number you have on your vehicle.
Here is another example of a numeracy game. This one is not a racing game, but the monsters jump to the next platform by finding the correct number of dots.
The final game, Teach Your Monster Adventurous Eating, offers several engaging minigames where students guide their monster to healthy eating habits.
When students make good choices for healthy eating, the monsters have a short, engaging dance party.
Classroom Implementation Ideas:
Teach Your Monster is a game-based learning tool that allows young students to practice reading, literacy, numeracy, and nutrition. Below, we share 12 ideas for using Teach Your Monster in your lessons.
- Reading Center Rotation – Include Teach Your Monster to Read as a station during literacy center rotations, allowing students to practice phonics skills independently.
- Sight Word Challenge – Use Teach Your Monster to Read to set classroom goals for collective sight word mastery.
- Data Collection Project – Have students track their progress in Teach Your Monster Number Skills and create simple graphs of their improvement.
- Problem-Solving Extensions – After gameplay, have students create their own Teach Your Monster-style math word problems using the concepts practiced.
- Nutrition Unit Companion – Use Teach Your Monster Adventurous Eating alongside science lessons about food groups and nutrition.
- Monster Writing Prompts – Have students write stories about their monsters’ adventures beyond the game.
- Progress Celebration Wall – Display screenshots or printouts of student monsters alongside their achievements.
- Math Center Activity – Incorporate Teach Your Monster Number Skills as a station during math rotations for practice with manipulatives and number sense.
- Goal-Setting Conferences – Meet with students individually to review their game progress and set personalized learning goals.
- Parent Involvement Bridge – Send home login information with specific game recommendations matching classroom learning.
- Formative Assessment Tool – Use data from the teacher dashboard to identify students that need additional support in specific skill areas.
- Science of Taste Exploration – Extend game concepts with classroom taste tests and discussions about sensory experiences.
Additional Video Tutorials and Articles:
- TeachersFirst Review: Teach Your Monster
- Video: “Teacher Guide to Teach Your Monster to Read”
- Video: “Teach Your Monster – Free and Fun Reading and Math for Kids”
- Teach Your Monster – Teachers Area: Using the Games in the Classroom
- Video Collection: 1 Minute How To… Teacher Tutorials
Have you used Teach Your Monster in your lessons? Share your activities in the comments below!