Using Video Game Design to Teach Literacy Skills

• By Roxanne Ledda
• 02/19/25

Literacy is critical for success in all facets of school and life. Yet, only 30% of U.S. fourth graders are considered proficient in reading, with scores actually declining by two percentage points from 2022 — and children from low-income families are most at risk.

The Max Schoenfeld School ("The Max"), a public school in the Bronx serving one of the poorest communities in the nation, is taking an innovative approach to defying these odds and improving student literacy. Students in a voluntary afterschool program are receiving extra literacy instruction while they design their own video games, and they might not even realize they're learning about language in the process.

This "career-embedded" approach to literacy instruction leverages students' engagement in a high-interest topic to teach them essential literacy skills. Plus, students are learning about game design and exploring possible career paths that can lead to successful, high-paying jobs down the road.

Who We Are

The Max is a Title I school serving as many as 800 students from prekindergarten through fifth grade. About 85% are Hispanic and 27% are English learners, which is higher than the city average.

More than 400 of our students attend a voluntary after-school program that runs from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. three days a week. For the first 40 minutes, students receive tutoring or academic support, and for the remainder of the time they're engaged in activities of their choice.

One of these choices is video game design, where our third and fourth graders get to design their own video game using Canva, then present their creation in a Shark Tank-style pitch to a panel of parents and educators.

We're using a curriculum from WorkEd for this program. Not only are students in the program learning about game design and marketing principles that could serve as a launching pad for successful careers, but they're also learning high-impact vocabulary words that we know are important for their academic achievement — words like "genre" and what a "legend" refers to on a map. They're learning and practicing important literacy skills such as listening, speaking, writing, and storytelling.

The curriculum was developed in conjunction with Valerie Martinez, a literacy expert and educational consultant with Link2Literacy. As principal of Baird Middle School in Fresno, California, Martinez had 100% of her English learner students reading and speaking on grade level by the time they graduated.

The Program in Action

The 10-week program takes students through the process of designing a video game, from coming up with a concept and characters, to storyboarding, to building the world where the game takes place. One student designed a game in which the players' parents have disappeared, and the players are tasked with finding them. Another child created a space-themed game in which the players explore different planets.

A recent lesson focused on world-building, in which students created a map of the environment their game would take place in. Students learned about the purpose of creating a map for their video game — to show players where their character could go within the game and the various points of interest — and they learned about the different types of gaming maps, such as horizontal and bird's-eye view. They also learned what a map legend was, and they designed a map for their own game.

In addition to learning about these concepts and applying them in a hands-on way, students have numerous opportunities to engage with language in each lesson. For instance, the curriculum uses sentence frames to have students practice their oral and written language skills. This scaffolding allows students to use more sophisticated sentence structures than they might normally use.

In the map-building lesson, students were given the sentence frame: "As the cartographer for my game map, I will include ____ and ____ as points of interest because ____." Each child had to stand up and describe two points of interest they would include on their map and why.

Hoping for Measurable Growth

By embedding literacy instruction within video game design, an activity that many kids are naturally drawn to, we're giving our students additional language practice in a fun and engaging context. We're also helping them learn practical skills that could lead to a successful career in game design, marketing or many other fields.

We hope this additional practice will lead to measurable growth in our students' literacy skills. To see if we're on the right track, we have been talking with the nonprofit organization Project Tomorrow to design a formal evaluation of our program.

Literacy is a foundational skill for success in all areas. With career-embedded literacy instruction in our afterschool programs, we're taking steps to ensure that even our most economically disadvantaged children have opportunities to thrive.