Endless Ocean

Tried and Tested!

I used this game last year to aid with teaching figurative language in poetry, focussing on personification. I decided to use this game again in the same way as it worked so well. In addition to this I had a SCITT student training in my class and I wanted her to see how the Wii could be used as an aid to teaching writing.

She was impressed by the ideas produced in these lessons and even delivered a lesson using the Wii. This was not an easy lesson as she was not familiar with the console herself and was aware that behavioural standards could slip when using a computer game. She had to spend some time playing the game before she taught using it but after that was fine and enjoyed the lesson.

Here are some examples of the writing they produced:

Explanation Texts

Wild Earth African Safari

Initially I had reservations about using this game as I felt the storyline was too large and complex. However, after listening to Toby's feedback from his lessons and looking at some of the writing produced by his class, I decided to use it for my writing on explanation texts. (It did help that Toby spent a short time showing me how to navigate the game as I am not very good with explorations games.)

The first assignment on the game is to take certain photographs and explore the area. During this time the commentators are giving lots of useful and interesting information about the African plains and the plants and animals found there.

The children wrote comprehensive notes and we spent time as a class developing these into decent sentences, working on our school targets. Once the children collected lots of information, discreet teaching on features of explanation texts was completed. In word and sentence level work, particular focus was placed on organising of sentences into paragraphs. (The next step in our school targets.)

All of the children wrote an explanation text using the notes they had collected from the game. I allowed the children to be fairly independent in their organisation (something I was able to do due to using the Wii several times and having confidence in the children with the work they produce). Some children wrote a very tightly focused explanation text on elephants, whereas others wrote about Safety on Safari, or similar.

Despite the independence in focus, the lessons were very tightly monitored and lots of guided reading and writing took place. Therefore, in the second part of this unit I decided to give the children free reigns. They spent time researching a chosen topic and wrote their own explanation text using all of the knowledge they had learnt.

Starters and introductions to lessons focused on the word and sentence level targets and the features of explanation texts still. All of the children were able to transfer their knowledge and were naturally enthused by the subject.

Mario Kart

When Using Mario Kart, we were working on two learning objectives: I can use a variety of simple, compound and complex sentences and I can organise sentences into paragraphs. These lessons were specifically focused towards our year group targets.

Before we used the Wii, we had two discrete lessons on sentence level work. Children were writing a variety of sentences which included adjectival phrases. Work was done on moving the subordinate clause within complex sentences.

On the first airing of Mario Kart, there was no racing whatsoever! The child in control simply hovered over each character in turn. The children had to brainstorm adjectives to describe the appearance of each character. Some children used their knowledge of racing to include description of personality too.

Whilst all of this was happening, I scribed some of my own ideas and some from the children onto our class whiteboard. The children then had to write descriptive sentences (or a paragraph) based on their chosen character.

The next day the writing progressed. Children were reminded about how to structure different ideas into paragraphs. The race began! During the race, the children had to consider different aspects. We thought about characters, scenery, weapons and enemies. Once again a lot of note taking took place where everyone was encouraged to use powerful language. It was great to hear similes, metaphors and personification being used with little adult input.

Finally the children wrote a series of paragraphs, each focusing on a different aspect of the race. The language was powerful and everybody was engaged. It is important to note that each time the children got lost in game play (and this did happen) the game was paused and attention was redirected to the learning objectives and success criteria.

Throughout the week's learning, we also managed to squeeze in a Mario Kart tournament involving the entire year group. Brilliant!

Using Wii Sport Resort

Having used Endless Ocean 2 and Wild African Safari which linked in beautifully with the class topic of Habitats, I was wondering what game to use in the Spring term - I could not see a game that fitted in so well with our class work, so I decided to do descrete English lessons using the Sports Resort game, focusing on sentence structure work. The children needed work on using more sophisticated connectives and commas to extend sentences.

To give the work some meaning, I told the children we would produce an explanatory poster about the game because we would also be producing explanatory texts in our topic work and this would be our way in to familiarising ourselves with the genre.

We played several different games but not all of them. For the first game we wrote phrases or simple sentences about how the game worked and how to play it, linked the sentences together in a sensible order to produce extended sentences. This was very much guided writing. We repeated the process for different games, each time I gave the children more independence in how they formed their sentences, then we evaluated them, redrafted and improved them (eg. swopped clauses, subsituted connectives for commas, introduced semi-colons) etc. It soon became obvious that many features were similar throughout the game and the children suggested a general paragraph, or introduction, covering these points.

The work was successful because the children were able to move on to their next piece of work, an explanatory leaflet about Darwin and show improved sentence work - everything from the least able children who used to find writing a sentence difficult and were now using full stops correctly, to the children who always wrote simple sentences and now were using 'and' 'so' and 'because' and finally the children who stuck with safe connectives and who now were choosing to use commas and extend sentences further (sometimes too far!).

However, if I was to use the game again, I might be tempted to do persuasive work - the children found it easier to put forward ideas for why the games were so good, what worked well, how it entertained them etc, then sticking to the facts of the game.

Curriculum Conferences

The teachers involved in this project will be presenting their work with the Wii at the two Curriculum Conferences in Suffolk on the 15th and 16th March 2011.  Resources that have been created during the project to support the use of Wild Earth African Safari, Endless Ocean/Endless Ocean 2, Another Code R and Mario Kart will be available on this blog and the Suffolk Learning Hub at the same time.  Also available then will be a request form for Suffolk schools to use to apply to borrow one set of Wii equipment for up to a term.

Another Code:R-a journey into lost memories

Having spent time exploring this game and unravelling the many dilemmas presented within the storyline, I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of patience. The children have become almost enmeshed in the characterisation of Ashley Mizuki Robbins and her personal quest to find answers to her mother's death. The game relies heavily on Ashley's relationship with her father, as they meet at Lake Juliet after a long period of absence. The lack of audible narration has meant that lengthy periods of dialogue between Ashley and her father have had to read aloud, however the realistic graphics and backgrounds combine with the clever use of flashbacks and motivating challenges,to ensure the children are fully involved in decision making. This engenders a willingness within the class to succeed for Ashley and provides children with an opportunity to share an empathy with a character.

Another Code:R has stimulated extended narrative writing from specific dilemmas, where the children have planned their own resolutions and endings to the story using the concept of a story mountain. There have also been benefits to speaking and listening, where aspects of PSHE have been discussed. We will conclude our work from Another Code:R by writing reviews of the game as contributions for the forthcoming school newspaper. Highly recommended if one can find the time and patience to explore the storyline.

Persuasion!

When working of persuasive writing with the children, we looked at different adverts and persuasive texts. The children identified the features of persuasive writing and collected words, phrases and rhetorical questions for future use.

Firstly we studied The Highwayman (Year 5-6 transition unit on the framework). The children had to make a decision about whether The Highwayman deserved to be shot, or simply imprisoned. They collected evidence from the text to support their views and used persuasive writing to use in a court of law. The week finished with a court case involving the whole year group.

This piece of work was very structured and the children received lots of guided writing sessions to support their use of persuasive language.

The following week was a chance for the children to have much more independence within their learning. This was where the use of the Wii came in! We spent a whole session playing different games on the Wii and talking about advantages to owning one. I encouraged children to play competitively and co-operatively as well as consider the variety of games on the market.

Once the children had collected lots of ideas they had to write the speech for a radio advertisement selling the Wii. Once again a significant amount of work was done away from the Wii on the class targets - I can use different structures to organise my writing. I can also use paragraphs to vary pace. Work was done in guided group sessions on beginning each paragraph with an introductory statement. Other than these skills being taught, the children were pretty much left to their own devices. A lot of the writing produced was of a good standard and the children were involved in their learning. Throughout this week, however, it did become apparent if children were not interested in computer games and those who had less experience of using a Wii understandably found it harder to produce persuasive paragraphs.

The next stage was to progress to paragraphing. Our year group target for the term focuses on using paragraphing and structure to organise writing. The children quickly grasped the ideas of paragraphing to organise their writing. I was most impressed with the fact that the use of powerful vocabulary and interesting sentence openers did not slip.

Following on from much work on descriptive learning, we used the Wii to develop our writing into paragraphs. To begin with we taught word and sentence level lessons showing the children how to create adverial and adjectival phrases. In these sessions children were encouraged to use a dictionary and thesaurus.

After this came Mario Kart Wii! At first the children were not even allowed to race, we simply hovered the controller over each of the characters and shared descriptive words and phrases.

Finally the children were allowed to race. Whilst doing so they were encouraged to describe the scenery, thinking about using all of their senses.

All Children were involved and the language produced was of a good quality.

Wild Earth: African Safari

Having been encouraged by the feedback from others who had used this game, I decided to use it to enhance a cross-genre, and cross curricular, writing led project called The Island.
Led by a small text extract, the children construct their own narrative of the strange goings on, on an unnamed island.

I used the game over a series of lessons to build the reality of exploring an alien environment - as in alien to their experience, not aliens of the space kind!- Once the children had grown used to the objective based approach to the game, I began to remove the context, and muted the sound. Over 2 lessons we observed a child 'walking' through the environment, and we began a vocabulary harvest. Recording sights that caught their imaginations, simple things that we asked whoever was playing to focus in on. The good thing about this game is that the player has a camera, and therefore we could zoom in to distant events, or tiny things, such as the shape of leaves, patterns on rocks or the flow of a stream.
We collected both words and phrases, and shared them, whilst the game was still on, narrating the scene.This experience fed into an extended piece of writing about their journey on the Island. Examples are from three groups, extension last.Evaluating this has been interesting. There is no doubt that the walkthrough was really productive. I have a very boy-heavy group of year 6s. Many who are very familiar with computer games (obviously) and have found that when I use the game out of its intended context, time needs to be spent on the game itself - or they just won't move on. Once that hurdle is over, the walthrough and narrations really helped many of them.
When discussing this with the children, after we had finished, a few felt that the graphical rendering may have limited their own imaginations. It is important to note that I have observed the opposite on our current project - a write-up of which shall be posted by the end of the week.

Toby.