Ten Things to Love About Classcraft

1. You can choose behaviors to promote and discourage

I first became interested in Classcraft for its gamified behavior management software. You can choose from the premade behaviors or add your own. Give XP, or experience points, for positive behaviors and take away HP, or heath points, for negative behaviors. 

Students collect XP to level up. Leveling up gives them new powers that their character can use and new GP, or gold points, that they can spend on new gear for their character. 

2. Students create their own characters and work in groups

There are three types of characters: Guardians, Mages, and Healers. Begin your Classcraft journey by having students select their own character and make an avatar. Then students get put into teams to monitor one another's HP. This promotes self-monitoring and positive peer pressure. 

Students can "fall" in Classcraft if their HP is depleted. If they are in danger of falling their teammates can take action to help them. Students who have elected to be Guardians can absorb damage for their teammate. If the student who may fall is a Mage they have powers to shield themselves. The Healers in the group can heal and give their teammates more HP.

When students fall, each member of their team loses some HP as well. Then the fallen member must commit to a pledge. You can use the premade pledges or create your own to match the consequence to the behavior.

3. Students can send positive messages to one another with Kudos

This built-in wall of praise is a great way for students to support one another and lift each other up. Students can earn XP by sending and receiving kudos.

4. Quests create a game-like lesson delivery method

Aside from providing an engaging behavior management system, Classcraft also provides a unique lesson delivery method called quests.

When you create a quest you use one of Classcraft's maps and you drop pins on different points. At each pin you place content for your students to engage with and/or assignments for them to complete.

At each pin you may write, insert images or video, provide links, and attach files. I love how this allows you to make use of content you already have in your files from previous years.

5. Quests can be student-paced, teacher-paced, or a combination of both

You have control of the settings for every pin on your map. This way you can determine if students should be able to move directly onto the next pin on the map or if they need to wait for your approval.

6. Assignment pins require students to hand in work

When you mark a pin as an assignment students will have to hand in work. You can give them feedback for their work right within Classcraft. You can also give them XP points for handing their work in on time with the option of giving an even greater number of points for turning it in early.

Classcraft does a great job of integrating with Google. Students can easily create and attach Google Drive files. You can even link your entire quest with Google Classroom if you like.

7. You can incorporate a class discussion board into your quests

If you want students to be able to write a response to a prompt that you wish everyone in the class to see or hold an online discussion you may set one of your pins to be a discussion board. You can reward points for student's contributions.

8. Story Mode quests are ready-to-go

Classcraft promotes the use of a narrative storytelling during the quest. This makes the experience of going through the pins on the map feel more game-like. Students read or listen to a narrative at each point in the map before they engage with the course content. 

Understanding that teachers may not have time to write their own game-like narrative script and need to focus more on the content that they are teaching, Classcraft created premade quests called Story Mode.

Story Mode creates the map for you and fills in the story. You just go through each pin and add your content and assignments. I love how the written narrative provided in story mode continues to build throughout multiple quests and matches the characters that students use for the behavior management portion.

*You can also visit the Quests Marketplace to access pre-made quests shared by other educators.

9. You can make class announcements

The Classcraft software also gives you tools for communication outside of quests. Here you can make class announcements and send attachments that will show up in notifications for all of your students.

10. You can message students privately

You can use the same software to message students privately as well. Students cannot send private communications to one another.