Skills that kids learn from Dreamscape other than reading

The primary goal of Dreamscape is to improve literacy rates around the world, and get students more engaged with the content they are reading. To accomplish this goal, we made an extremely engaging game that runs on reading. So of course kids will improve their reading skills through playing Dreamscape– but those aren’t the only skills. In today’s blog, we are going to look deeper at the various skills children will learn through playing Dreamscape.

Reading helps introduce new vocabulary and word forms to developing readers. Dreamscape delivers reading passages that automatically and seamlessly adjust to a player’s reading level as they work through content. This ensures that kids remain in their zone of proximal development, always reading at a level that is challenging, but not discouraging.

1) Word Work and Vocabulary

Let’s start with the basics: everyone who plays Dreamscape, and wants to progress in the game, has to read– a lot. Practice may not always make perfect, but it certainly makes progress. The act of reading anything, especially at a young age, improves reading skills. With Dreamscape, kids aren’t reading just anything. They are reading content that has been carefully crafted, vetted, and sourced by teachers and professional writers. Reading helps introduce new vocabulary and word forms to developing readers. Dreamscape delivers reading passages that automatically and seamlessly adjust to a player’s reading level as they work through content. This ensures that kids remain in their zone of proximal development, always reading at a level that is challenging, but not discouraging.

2) Comprehension and Engagement

Being able to recognize and decode words on a page is one thing, but comprehending and engaging with text is a significant next step up. After reading a text passage in Dreamscape, kids are required to answer questions based on that passage. To progress in the game and build up their dwell (base), they must answer these comprehension questions correctly. Kids will be faced with a variety of questions that test their comprehension skills. Some may be about predicting what happens next in the passage they just read, determining the genre of the passage, or visualizing the setting the passage takes place in. These are skills that kids in grades 3-6 have started to learn about, and will continue to master through Dreamscape!

3) Resource Management

Players quickly realize that they must prioritize building and upgrading some items over others. Dreamscape’s currencies will teach them more than just resource management. Within the skill of resource management, there are many other skills that kids will inherently learn. Skills such as responsibility, patience, and performing a cost-benefit analysis are things that kids will develop as they learn how the currency system in Dreamscape works. For example, a kid will quickly learn that they need a lot of patience in order to unlock all of the reveries in the game, and a lot of responsibility to that they don’t spend all their currency on items to make their character look cool. These skills are important in the game, and in real life, and are just one more reason why Dreamscape isn’t only getting them engaged with their reading!

4) Strategy and Critical Thinking

Strategy is a key skill in Dreamscape vital to a player’s fate in most game challenges. They must understand the unique strengths and weaknesses of each revery (character) to use them to their greatest benefit. They must consider the most advantageous patterns and shapes of construction for the creation of their dwell. They must predict the maneuvers of their opponents and concoct protections against them. These critical thinking skills improve over time as the player challenges more fellow Dreamseekers (and does a whole lot more reading along the way). As players advance in the game, they will learn things such as the Poppa Piñata is fantastic for breaking through opponents walls, Vorp is fantastic from a distance, and their Avatar can take lots of damage. All of these reveries have their own part to play in the Dreamseeker’s quest for Dreamscape fame and literary greatness! Understanding what each character and item does in the game allows kids to develop unique strategies and methods for defeating other Dreamseekers and rising to the top of the leaderboard.

Some of the four skills mentioned above are not necessarily skills that kids are going to focus on developing while playing Dreamscape. But some are skills that will develop naturally, almost invisibly through their progress in the game. When done correctly and with care, gaming is not just a way for children to be entertained, but also a fun way to develop skills that will help children as they develop into young-adults.

Sign up for Dreamscape here: https://go.pardot.com/l/406482/2019-03-04/78zkkr

Our team here at Squiggle Park is incredibly passionate about creating a future where every person has access to education and can become passionate about learning. Here’s to that future.