Why I Built An Interactive Reading Game For My Classroom (And What It’s Done For Reluctant Readers)
It was 1:15 on a rainy Tuesday in October, and I was staring at three empty reading logs on my desk, same as I had every week for two months. Javi had his hood pulled over his eyes, pretending to nap, after telling me the week before that “books just feel like homework, even when they’re not.” Mia was doodling explosions in the margin of her worksheet, and when I asked what she thought of the graphic novel she’d checked out, she shrugged and said “the main character doesn’t even fight a dragon until page 120.” That’s when I pulled up the half-finished Google Sites project I’d been messing with on my projector: SmorgasWorld.
I’d started building the site over summer break, fed up with the same pattern every year: half my 7th grade ELA students leave kindergarten loving stories, and by middle school, most of the ones who struggle with fluency or just get bored easily decide they “hate reading.” I tried all the standard tricks: letting kids pick their own books, shortening reading log requirements, doing book tastings in the library. Nothing stuck for the kids who’d already checked out. So I decided to build something that tied the fun kids get from exploring game worlds to the books they were already reading.
The premise is simple: there are over 300 pre-built literary worlds tied to everything from Charlotte’s Web to the latest graphic novel sensation. Every 20 pages a kid reads unlocks a new area of the world they’re exploring, with small quests that take two minutes to complete: name one thing the main character would bring to a picnic, draw the villain’s bad haircut, write a sentence about what you’d do differently if you were lost in the woods. The whole thing is guided by Smorgas, a sardonic old dragon who’s along for the ride and has zero patience for cheesy educational encouragement. If you complete a quest, he doesn’t tell you “great work, future reader!” He says something like “Wow, you didn’t mess that up. I owe myself a nap for not having to bail you out.” If you leave a quest blank, he says “Cool, you hate fun. I’m gonna go take a nap in a volcano while you figure this out.”
When I pulled it up that Tuesday, Mia leaned forward immediately. “The dragon is funny,” she said, which was the first positive thing she’d said about any ELA activity all semester. Javi lowered his hood enough to see the screen, and asked if there was a world for the new street racing graphic novel he’d been sneaking under his desk. I told him I hadn’t added that one yet, but any kid could add their own world and quests, and write Smorgas’s lines for it. By the end of class, Javi had built the racetrack world, and Smorgas’s first line was “If you crash this car I’m leaving you here to walk home. Don’t @ me.”
Over the next few months, I watched things shift in small, quiet ways. Kids who never turned in a reading log started turning in three quests a week. Kids who only ever read graphic novels started branching out to books about other topics they cared about, just to unlock new areas. Javi finished his first full-length book in three years back in March, and he now comes in during homeroom every Monday to add new quests to worlds other kids built. Mia is on her 12th Wings of Fire book, and she’s made it her personal mission to write a Smorgas roast for every main character in the series.
It’s easy to look at that and call it a magic fix, but it’s not. I still have half a dozen kids who don’t care about SmorgasWorld at all. The Little House on the Prairie world is half-finished because I never got around to adding quests after building the main page, and a few of the older worlds have broken links I haven’t fixed yet. A parent emailed me a month back asking if all the screen time for the game defeated the purpose of reading, which is a fair question – I just tell families that kids can write their quests on paper and unlock new areas offline, the website is just a convenient hub for the classroom.
What I’ve learned from this, though, translates way beyond my little homemade game, for teachers and parents alike. First, we’ve spent years telling kids reading is its own reward, but for kids who’ve had bad experiences with reading, that doesn’t land. Instead of rewarding reading with something unrelated like candy or extra recess, tie the reward to the story they already care about. If your kid loves dinosaur books, make a simple checklist of quests: find three different types of dinosaurs in your book, draw a T-Rex, get a silly joke from you when you’re done. It takes five minutes, and it reinforces that reading gives you more of the thing you love, not just a prize for checking a box.
Second, ditch the fake upbeat encouragement. Kids know when you’re faking excitement for their 10th drawing of a Minecraft zombie. Smorgas works because he’s grumpy and sarcastic, and he doesn’t gush over every small thing. Instead of “wow, that’s amazing, great reading!” try “I can’t believe you got through that whole boring part where they talk about farming. That’s solid. Want a cookie after dinner?” It feels real, not scripted.
Third, let reading be messy. SmorgasWorld doesn’t grade quests, there’s no wrong answer, and kids can add whatever worlds they want, even if it’s a random webcomic they read online. A lot of us get stuck on kids reading the “right” books, or doing reading the “right” way. The point isn’t to get them to read the book I want them to read. It’s to get them to read something, on their own terms.
Last week I stopped by the bookshelf after class and saw Javi showing a new 6th grader how to add his own racing world to SmorgasWorld. When they pulled it up, Smorgas popped up and said “If you crash this car I’m not helping you. My scales have enough dents already,” and both boys snickered. I still haven’t figured out how to reach every kid who says they hate reading, and I probably never will. But right now, that little corner of the internet with 300 half-baked literary worlds and a grumpy dragon is working well enough for me.
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