Abstract:

Educational games have shaped the teacher practices for decades and aid him/her to make learning environment excited and more engaging for learners. As a result, this paper is an attempt to investigate how educational games can be powerful when they lead students to be fully engaged in a meaningful learning that advances their personalities and prepares them for real life. It explores the impact of using gross motor games in social studies classroom on developing 5th grade male students’ social skills in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its research design includes a set of gross motor games which will be presented in three social studies classrooms. The teacher/s of these classes is/are going to administer gross motor games to their students within certain lessons in the two social studies units. Students of these classrooms will be surveyed before the intervention and after completing the two social studies units to assess the impact of GMG on developing their social skills. The sample of this quasi-experimental study reflects a convenience sampling of three social studies classrooms of an elementary school in Abu Dhabi Educational Council at UAE. Statistically, a paired t test is used to determine whether there is a difference between means of pretest and posttest. The findings of this study may contribute to advance teaching practices in social studies classrooms by providing teachers with a strategy which make his/her class more excited and engaging.