Thirty games for the ten minutes you actually get.
Fourteen of them are about the job — the behaviour call you make in two seconds, the line a student's working broke on, the silence after a question. The other sixteen are the break room, and no less good for it. Free, no sign-up, and no scores leave your device.
Classroom craft
The judgement calls you make in seconds, practised somewhere they cost nothing.
Room Reader
Period five, and three things going wrong at once
A live class map and the moves you actually have — proximity, a look, a name, a pause, the door. Reach for the big stick first and you will find you have nothing left for the thing that happens at minute thirty. Scored on the learning time you kept, how hot the room got, and whether the class still thinks you are fair.
6–10 minPlayThe Call
A parent on the phone, and everything you say being remembered
Angry, anxious, unreachable, recording. A live trust meter, a second meter for whether the child is any better off, and a third counting what you have quietly promised — because every reassurance is a commitment, and the debrief prints the list.
6–10 minPlayHands Down
Four hands should not carry the lesson
Question a class without letting the same four students answer everything. Cold call, think-pair-share, wait time and the hinge question, each with the honest cost in pace that gets them abandoned by November. The game quietly tracks who you never asked.
6–10 minPlayWait Time
Ask, then hold the silence
Hold the button for as long as you would hold the silence, and let go when you would take an answer. Measured wait time in real classrooms is under one second. Three seconds changes who answers and how long their answers are — and from the front of the room it feels like fifteen.
3 minPlaySubject mastery
Reading student work properly, and marking it the way your colleague would.
Spot the Slip
Find the line the thinking broke on
A student's working is on the board and the answer is wrong. Find the exact line, then name the misconception behind it — adding fractions across the top, two minuses making a bigger minus, seasons caused by distance. Every item is a rule a real child holds, not a slip of the pen.
5–8 minPlayMark in Sixty
A rubric, a script, sixty seconds
Scored on agreement with the moderated mark, not on what feels fair. Method marks, answers with no working, handwriting you can barely read, and the drift that arrives somewhere around script forty. The pressure is the point.
8 minPlayBoard Work
The order that teaches, not the order that arrives
A worked example can reach the right answer and teach nothing, because experts compress exactly where beginners need it opened out. What goes on the board next — and why that step rather than the one that would get there faster.
5–8 minPlayPedagogy and planning
Objectives, questions, sequencing — the part of the job that happens before the bell.
Bloom Climber
Pitch the question at the rung you meant
Naming the levels is easy. Hearing which rung the question you just asked actually lands on is not — and a lesson planned at evaluate but questioned at recall was planned for nothing. Watch for the questions that use technical vocabulary and still only ask you to remember.
5–8 minPlaySharp Objectives
Something you could check by the bell
Turn "understand fractions" into something you could actually mark. Activities, coverage and feelings are the three impostors that get written on plans instead — along with all, most and some, which quietly decides in advance who is allowed to climb.
5–8 minPlayForty Minutes
What the bell deletes
Build a lesson out of blocks and watch the minutes. Overrun does not extend the period — it deletes whatever was at the end of your plan, which is always the check and the plenary. Order matters twice: you cannot practise what has not been modelled, and a plenary is only a plenary if it is last.
5 minPlayDistractor Forge
Wrong answers that tell you something
A multiple-choice item is only diagnostic if each wrong option is where a real student would actually land. Filler makes the item easier without making it more informative — the score goes up and you learn nothing about anybody, which is the worst trade in assessment.
5–8 minPlayAdmin and speed
Reports, cover, the inbox. The work nobody trains you for and everybody does.
Report Lines
The sentence that goes home
Describe the work, not the child. Every line has to survive one question — what is this based on? — and give a parent one thing they could actually do tonight. Includes the sentences that are not yours to write at all.
5–8 minPlayCover Crunch
Three staff off, one morning, rules you may not break
Fill the cover sheet before 8:40. A teacher who is teaching cannot cover; protected planning can be taken but it costs; specialists teach the lesson and everyone else supervises it. A small, honest cousin of Timetable Studio, and not quite perfectly solvable — which is the honest part.
4–6 minPlayStaffroom Inbox
Eleven things, twenty minutes, one of them urgent
Monday, 8:04. A safeguarding disclosure, a cover request with a deadline, an angry email sent at 22:47, and a newsletter about parking in nine weeks. Urgent and important are not the same word, and the lesson happens once while the inbox will still be there at break.
6–10 minPlayFun and relaxation
The break room. Short enough for a free period, and not about teaching at all.
Chalk & Dagger
A teacher, a stolen student, and a very long detention
A proper pixel-art adventure. Something came through the blackboard and took a child out of 6B, and you are the only one still in the building. Six places to fight through, twelve weapons from a metre rule to the school bell, a shop that buys your confiscated rubbish, and a kettle that brings you back every time you do not make it.
20 min a sittingPlayBell Lap
Two dice, one corridor, one bell
The staffroom board game. Roll two dice and then choose which one to walk — the left, the right, or both added together — and collect gold stars round the corridor loop until the bell goes. Doubles hand the dice straight back. Set the clock at the door: three minutes, seven, or a whole free period.
3–15 minPlayChess
A rated ladder from 300 to grandmaster
A real chess engine with a clock, takeback and resign. Start with Smudge at 300 and climb — beat Chalkie at the top and the staffroom grandmasters start letting themselves in.
10–30 minPlayStaffroom Quiz
Ten questions, one clock
General knowledge with a teaching streak running through it. Answer fast for bonus points, and take away a small fact each time.
3 minPlayWord of the Break
Six guesses, five letters
A school-flavoured word puzzle. Green means right letter, right place — the rest you work out from what is left.
4 minPlayMemory Match
Find the pairs before the moves run out
Flip two cards, keep the pairs, remember the misses. Three grid sizes, from a quick warm-up to a genuine test.
2–6 minPlayCompass Box Duel
Two geometry boxes, a compass each
Two compass boxes on wheels lob a pencil, a protractor or a well-aimed eraser across the hills. Set the angle, judge the wind, and mind the arc — nothing flies straight.
5–10 minPlayFour in a Row
Drop, block, and spot the double threat
Simple to pick up and surprisingly deep. The bots search ahead properly, so the tougher ones see your trap two moves before you spring it.
5 minPlayNoughts and Crosses
Three sizes, from solved to genuinely hard
Your avatar drops into the square you pick. Classic 3x3 is solved — the hard computer cannot be beaten. The 9x9 needs five in a row and is a different game entirely.
2–10 minPlayReversi
Corners win games, not discs
Trap a line of your opponent and the whole line turns your colour. Take too much too early and the good players will hand you the board and take every corner.
10 minPlayBattleship
A fleet to hide, a fleet to hunt
Three sizes of water, from the classic ten-by-ten to a sixteen-square armada of eleven ships. Four computer levels — the Admiral works out where your ships can still be and never wastes a shot — or pass the phone to a friend.
10–25 minPlaySheep Dash
Five hundred fields, one farmer
Tap a sheep and she bolts for the fence — but only if her lane is clear, and only if the farmer is not at the gate she is heading for. Work out the order, watch his patrol, and empty the field.
2 min a levelPlayMine Field
Every number is telling you something
The classic, done properly: your first tap is never a mine, and tapping a finished number clears round it. Three fields, from a nine-by-nine to something that will eat a free period.
3–15 minPlaySum Squares
Swipe, add up, run out of room
Slide the board and equal numbers become one bigger one. Easy to start, hard to stop, and the only thing standing between you and a big number is where you leave the small ones.
5 minPlayNumber Duty
Sudoku with exactly one answer
Generated fresh every time and checked for a single solution before you see it. Pencil marks, a clash warning, and a clock you can ignore.
10–25 minPlayDots and Boxes
The back-of-the-book game, with chains
Join two dots, close a box, go again. The tough opponent counts the chains and hands you the shortest one — which is exactly how this game is really played.
5–10 minPlay