Community of Reading Engagement

Cranium CoRE: the reading comprehension game show for schools

Students read a book together, play a TV style game show in teams, then discuss and defend their answers with the text. It works in the classroom, in the school library and school against school.

Game Statistics

  • 1,875Total Books

  • 7,013Total Games

  • 7,797Total Members

Battle of the Books

Florida schools have run their Battle of the Books competitions on Cranium CoRE for more than a decade - school battles, district semi-finals and finals, grades 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. The game-show screen goes up, the teams sit down with their books, and the questions send every reader back into the text.

  • Ready-made BOB, SSYRA, Florida Teens Read and Guys Read game sets
  • School vs school, same grade, different buildings
  • Up to 10 teams answering on their own devices
  • Open books: every answer is proved with the text

Engage and Enlighten them today!

Empower them for life!

Watch more videos of students playing the game, talking about the game and teachers raving about Cranium CoRE's benefits. Then create a free account and try it out for yourself!

Teams of students, each sharing one tablet, point at a Cranium CoRE question on the classroom screen while their teacher smiles.

Benefits of Cranium CoRE

Cranium CoRE teaches a life long learning skill that will aid the members of our community no matter what curriculum or job they pursue. Our process creates a meta-cognitive discussion with students to defend the answers and prove them contextually with an open book.

  • H.O.T. Questions (higher order thinking)

  • Conversation leads to better comprehension

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  • Collaboration and teamwork

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  • Read aloud/along

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  • Improved Test Scores

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  • Teacher Satisfaction

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A cross-curricular solution

Cranium CoRE is a cross-curricular solution to this challenge for grades 3-12. The focus of this process is discussion. The higher order thinking questions used in this method are a springboard for thematic conversation leading to improved comprehension skills. The goal is to have our students think independently at times. It is also a goal to show them how to be interdependent, collaborative learners.

The Process used with our Cranium CoRE methodology includes, in this sequence:

Cranium CoRE game question with four answer choices and team buzzers
  1. 1

    Read Aloud

  2. 2

    Play the Game

  3. 3

    Discuss the Text

  4. 4

    Defend your Answer

The language skills involved with this process; reading, writing, speaking and listening, are about THINKING. You improve these skills by doing them! The challenge for all educators is how to motivate students to make practicing these skills as enjoyable as other things students do for fun (i.e., video games, the Internet, Game Boys, etc.).

Don't take our word for it, read our testimonials.

What educators say

"For most children reading is hard and writing is even harder. This TV game show format within the Cranium CoRE methods offers an exciting environment that motivates children of any age to read so they can participate in this fun filled event. I highly endorse it as a way to encourage children to read and write."

Debbie Svec, 2009 President of the Florida Association of Media in Education (F.A.M.E.)

Read our testimonials

Create a free account

Still not convinced that Cranium CoRE is right for you? We encourage you to browse this website and watch our videos to get a better understanding of how to use Cranium CoRE with your kids. Create a free account and see how our online Community of Reading Engagement builds students' skills in Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening.

We have created a virtual community of teachers, students and parents who not only use our methods to engage readers, but also to compose their own games for the sake of improving language skills, especially reading comprehension.