How a love for Minecraft can blossom into a love for reading

Millions of kids around the world play Minecraft, and it didn’t take long for adults to notice something: It has educational value. With Microsoft’s Minecraft: Education Edition leading the way, more schools are using Minecraft in classrooms, having their kids experiment with science and math on the screen, or encouraging them to build historical settings or scenes from books. But there is one aspect of Minecraft education that I think can be discussed more: Minecraft and literacy.

Tech writer Clive Thompson wrote in Wired, “Games, it seems, can motivate kids to read—and to read way above their level. This is what Constance Steinkuehler, a games researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discovered. She asked middle and high school students who were struggling readers (one 11th-grade student read at a 6th-grade level) to choose a game topic they were interested in, and then she picked texts from game sites for them to read—some as difficult as first-year-college language. The kids devoured them with no help and nearly perfect accuracy.”