Instill a Love of Learning in Your Students with Book of Spells

In Book of Spells, students answer interactive reading questions to advance through the game. The more answers they get right, the more resources they can collect (doughnuts, soap, etc.) to help their sweet little monsters grow. The entertaining storyline is inspired by popular children’s video games. The quest for resources to help the little monster grow incentivizes students’ reading engagement. The game’s library includes stories by popular Quebec authors, such as Gilles Vigneault, Simon Boulerice, Lori Weber, and Sandra Dumais.

Book of Spells has five difficulty levels so that students can play according to their skills. It is mainly geared toward 8- to 12- year-olds, but it can be adapted for younger or older students, depending on their reading level.

Players can track their progress with a running tally of books they have read in a given amount of time. These scores can be encouraging and rewarding, particularly for students with reading difficulties. In addition, the stories cover a wide variety of topics and themes to interest all sorts of readers.

There are many ways to use Book of Spells in your classroom. Students can play individually, in teams, or even together with the whole class. Here are some ideas to try:

• Practice oral expression and comprehension. Choose one person (student or teacher) to play the role of narrator. Or, when playing with the class as a whole, students can take turns reading paragraphs out loud.

• Form reading circles to answer the questions and discuss the stories in greater detail.

• Have a class discussion about students’ favourite parts of a story, what they took away from it, and what they thought of the illustrations.

• Make a list of new words: each student selects a word or words they did not know. These words can be pinned to the board for later exploration of what they mean.

• Compile a list of the group’s favourite stories and have your students form their own literary award jury. They can then advocate for their favourite stories by talking about the parts they liked best.