Just a thought!
At our last PD day after the Christmas break, our cluster decided to hold a series of workshops with a focus on ICT. I was asked to work with a teacher from another school running a workshop entitled Widening the World of Nintendo.
During this workshop I spoke about the ways in which I have used different games to assist with the teaching of writing. It was well received and people were interested in using something pertinent to children's lives as a stimulus for their learning.
The teacher sharing the workshop with me was discussing the way she uses the Nintendo DS to assist with learning so I thought I would share it.
She uses the consoles for 15 minutes every day as a maths intervention. The intervention starts in the third term of Year 5 and continues into Year 6 for 2 terms. The children use the Maths Training game. The teachers at the school feel strongly that once children have a secure understanding and knowledge of number and times tables, the other areas of maths fall into place more easily. They feel that this intervention has helped to improve rapid recall of number facts and, in turn has helped to improve their maths levels.
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Evolving use of technology in the classroom.
Something slightly different as I am going to write about using an iPad. Just before Christmas I chose to write letters to Santa Claus with my Year 6 class. Ordinarily the children are enthused by this type of activity despite no longer being taken in by tales of St Nick. This year, however, my class were particularly scornful and lacking in enthusiasm.
When I set the rules for the letter: asking for three gifts only which must not need any form of electricity to work and asking for a fourth gift which would benefit someone other than themselves and require selfless thought, the resistance to the task grew.
I then pulled out my iPad from my cupboard to show the children a letter I had sent to Santa via my Letters to Santa app and the personal (well almost) response I had receive. Strangely enough, tuts and groans subsided and excited murmers began to bubble.
Once the children knew they would only be able to send their letters if they were of a respectable standard, I received an impressive level of thought and writing!
Something slightly different as I am going to write about using an iPad. Just before Christmas I chose to write letters to Santa Claus with my Year 6 class. Ordinarily the children are enthused by this type of activity despite no longer being taken in by tales of St Nick. This year, however, my class were particularly scornful and lacking in enthusiasm.
When I set the rules for the letter: asking for three gifts only which must not need any form of electricity to work and asking for a fourth gift which would benefit someone other than themselves and require selfless thought, the resistance to the task grew.
I then pulled out my iPad from my cupboard to show the children a letter I had sent to Santa via my Letters to Santa app and the personal (well almost) response I had receive. Strangely enough, tuts and groans subsided and excited murmers began to bubble.
Once the children knew they would only be able to send their letters if they were of a respectable standard, I received an impressive level of thought and writing!
Endless Ocean - My Old Favourite
Endless Ocean
My old favourite! I used this game in the same way as before because it works well for me. To start the week, I teach discrete word level lessons on figurative language, particularly simile, metaphor and personification. This year I gave the children some pictures of weather to describe using these figurative angugae techniques. As you can imagine the outcome was varying. We spent a lot of time as a class 'stealing', 'borrowing' and 'magpieing' classmate's ideas and sharing examples on the visualiser which we edited and improved as a class.
Finally the children were allowed to enter the Endless Ocean. As always I sacrificed an entire English lesson to play this game - something I am no longer hesitant to do. There were two learning objectives: I can think of examples of figurative language and I can plan a poem into verses. During the game playing the lesson was structured and the children were directed to think about different topics which could be used for verses eg rocks, plants, water movement etc. Any good ideas were shared and myself and my TA gave the children ideas.
Following on from this each lesson had a short amount of shared writing with lots of mixed ability talk partner work to assist the children with writing their own poems. Each group of children also had a small guided writing session for a verse.
In the photographs I have included a couple of examples of writing completed on a different topic after using the Wii. It demonstrates a better use of vocabulary and descriptive language which was definitely assisted by the Wii lessons. Once of the pieces of work featured is by a child who entered Year 6 at a level 1c. Using the Wii as a stimulus certainly assisted him.
My old favourite! I used this game in the same way as before because it works well for me. To start the week, I teach discrete word level lessons on figurative language, particularly simile, metaphor and personification. This year I gave the children some pictures of weather to describe using these figurative angugae techniques. As you can imagine the outcome was varying. We spent a lot of time as a class 'stealing', 'borrowing' and 'magpieing' classmate's ideas and sharing examples on the visualiser which we edited and improved as a class.
Finally the children were allowed to enter the Endless Ocean. As always I sacrificed an entire English lesson to play this game - something I am no longer hesitant to do. There were two learning objectives: I can think of examples of figurative language and I can plan a poem into verses. During the game playing the lesson was structured and the children were directed to think about different topics which could be used for verses eg rocks, plants, water movement etc. Any good ideas were shared and myself and my TA gave the children ideas.
Following on from this each lesson had a short amount of shared writing with lots of mixed ability talk partner work to assist the children with writing their own poems. Each group of children also had a small guided writing session for a verse.
In the photographs I have included a couple of examples of writing completed on a different topic after using the Wii. It demonstrates a better use of vocabulary and descriptive language which was definitely assisted by the Wii lessons. Once of the pieces of work featured is by a child who entered Year 6 at a level 1c. Using the Wii as a stimulus certainly assisted him.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
A walk in the park. Or Castle. Or forest.
As I have been fortunate enough to have experimented with a variety of game genres, my approach to using games has evolved. Breaking free of the 'confines' of the game, and using not playing, has been central to this project.
During the first term, extending descriptions and sentences became a focus for development with my year 6 class.
The central advantage, for me, that using a digital world has over a piece of film or a picture is freedom.
Physical freedom: To move, look, look again and change perspective on an environment. Enabling the children to simply walk, gaze at an idle detail, such as a tree or a candle on a wall. These 'experiences' and the control to examine and reexamine are similar to 'real world' observation and experience. Encouraging and developing the class to think with a writer's mind, and to extend the length of description, involved the child being able to imagine and 'see' the written experience in their mind first. The opportunity to have that in 3D computer-generated space proved to extremely valuable.
The rich and varied environmental detail available in modern computer games presents a previously unimaginable resource for exploring and creating new 'worlds' within the context of creative writing.
That leads to the second great freedom afforded by using video games.
Narrative freedom: The ability to adopt , or partially, or totally reject the narrative direction of a game. When used as a tool to inspire narrative, forcing a direction or context has proven to be challenging - particularly among higher ability writers. But there is no need. Within the context of the game, the woodland above leads to story line that takes you to fetch a set of gem stones for a priest. But it could be anywhere, and lead to anything. Using the 3D game engine as a standalone model enables children to patch this wood into and story we are reading or creating. Similarly, the house below provided and ideal environment to explore the internal lighting. What would the atmosphere inside a Tudor house be like? How can we describe walking around inside? Much better than looking at pictures, simply use the game, and walk in!
Looking out of the top floor window, on to the street below at dawn. Hearing your own creaking footsteps, the muffled conversations of passers by and the tweeting of birds led to extended descriptive writing that carried through the children's work. Leading to a happy teacher!
The game used in this instance was - long title alert - The Elder scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was released in March 2006, when my current class were just 4. It runs perfectly well (surprisingly) on my modest dual core work laptop, and was bought for a whole £3!
Examples of Children creating their own narrative from a shared experience in a game world:
A tale of kidnapping and escape.
A story that turned out to be based in a boarding school - told through flashback - a device we used 'Another Code: R to look at.
During the first term, extending descriptions and sentences became a focus for development with my year 6 class.
The central advantage, for me, that using a digital world has over a piece of film or a picture is freedom.
Physical freedom: To move, look, look again and change perspective on an environment. Enabling the children to simply walk, gaze at an idle detail, such as a tree or a candle on a wall. These 'experiences' and the control to examine and reexamine are similar to 'real world' observation and experience. Encouraging and developing the class to think with a writer's mind, and to extend the length of description, involved the child being able to imagine and 'see' the written experience in their mind first. The opportunity to have that in 3D computer-generated space proved to extremely valuable.
That leads to the second great freedom afforded by using video games.
Narrative freedom: The ability to adopt , or partially, or totally reject the narrative direction of a game. When used as a tool to inspire narrative, forcing a direction or context has proven to be challenging - particularly among higher ability writers. But there is no need. Within the context of the game, the woodland above leads to story line that takes you to fetch a set of gem stones for a priest. But it could be anywhere, and lead to anything. Using the 3D game engine as a standalone model enables children to patch this wood into and story we are reading or creating. Similarly, the house below provided and ideal environment to explore the internal lighting. What would the atmosphere inside a Tudor house be like? How can we describe walking around inside? Much better than looking at pictures, simply use the game, and walk in!
The game used in this instance was - long title alert - The Elder scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was released in March 2006, when my current class were just 4. It runs perfectly well (surprisingly) on my modest dual core work laptop, and was bought for a whole £3!
Examples of Children creating their own narrative from a shared experience in a game world:
A tale of kidnapping and escape.
A story that turned out to be based in a boarding school - told through flashback - a device we used 'Another Code: R to look at.
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Wild Earth African Safari Year 3 Autumn Term 2012
Having only
briefly used the Nintendo Wii for a starter activity in maths I could see, even
within that short amount of time, how engaged the children were. Therefore it
seemed sensible to pursue the use of the Wii and to give it much more air time.
After reading this blog I decided to use Wild Earth African Safari for our
upcoming Year 3 literacy unit Non-Chronological reports. The children had
already been learning how to make effective notes using books and videos so it
seemed logical to use a new, exciting stimulus for the children to apply their
newly learnt skills.
The
children were instantly engaged when they saw the Wii and couldn’t wait to get
started with the lesson. We had the two year 3 classes together (49 students)
who all sat with their literacy books ready to make notes. We discussed what
they would be making notes and explained that we would be choosing children who
are confident using the Wii to control the game whilst the others made notes.
The lower ability children were in two groups with a teaching assistant who
scribed their ideas into note format. In addition to this the teacher made
notes of key vocabulary on a portable whiteboard as they moved through the
game.
At
appropriate moments we paused the game to give the children time to collect and
organise their notes according to their sub-headings. This process continued
for two lessons and within that time the children produced at least two pages
of notes. The following lessons enabled the children to write their notes into
a non-chronological report so we explained that they were using their notes to
report of the African Serengeti where the game was set. This set a great
context for their learning and they were eager to share the facts they had
learnt. We noticed that the children were able to easily connect simple
sentences together using a range of connectives because of their detailed notes
for example ‘Elephants produced 330 pounds of dung a day however dung beetles
would then roll the dung into little balls.’ The children had the added bonus
of the visual stimuli which helped them with their pictures, diagrams and
captions.
These
are some photographs of the children’s note taking while watching the game and
the finished reports.
Saturday, 5 January 2013
'Night in the Museum 2' with Year 1
I have a mixed Year R/1 class, and most of the Year 1 children I have are still working towards the Early Learning Goals, and were at level P6-P7 at the beginning of the academic year. Three of the chidlren also lacked confidence with writing or did not like the process of writing.
I started using the Wii after half term Autumn 2012, during 25 minutes slots of English time a day.Our class topic was Light and Dark, and I chose 'Night in the Museum' to link in.
Activity 1: Poem
The class were working on activites based around witches and wizards. We read a poem 'The Wizard's Pocket' and Year R were working on activites related to a witch's cauldren. The Year Ones were to write a poem about what was in the Night Watchman's magic bag.
After playing the intial stages for a while (wondering around the museum, finding coins, throwing the stick for the dinosaur, and using the torch and chain from the bag) we started to write:
- Nouns: Objects that could go in the night watchman's magic bag using the game setting for ideas.
- Adjectives: Words that describe (but not necessarily for the objects chosen, but any objects they saw on the game)
- Verbs: Using the action in the game, the children thought of different verbs.
Finally, in Guided Writing I showed the children how to randomly choose a word from each of the above to create a list of objects, and therefore a poem. The children then chose their words and finally they published them into a poem:
 |
| 'Big box flying, Brown torch playing Gold box throwing' |
 |
| 'Box shiny Silver gum Small torch' |
'coin. chain, snack' work from a child who finds writing frustrating and difficult. He was very involved and motivated thoughout the work, and tried far harder to sound out words. 
Nouns written by my most able child, who finished the term at level 1C. She has had issues with confidence, often crying when asked to think of what to write, but during this work I could not stop her from writing!We were looking at prepositions in the whole class teaching, and had read 'Bears in the Night', a story describing the bears journey, full of prepositions.The Year 1s then used the Wii and we described the way the Nightwatchman was moving around/up/over/on/under etc.
Using a list of these prepositions, the children wrote simple instructions of where to go to find the coins in the game eg 'Run up the stairs', 'Jump on to the boxes'. They had already written instructions with 'bossy words' in a previous unit of work.
Activity 3: Story
The children by now were familiar with the museum's layout and had walked past the pictures on the walls upstairs a few times. We stood by each, one was of an Indian plain, another of a Mayan temple in the jungle, and we talked about what would be in those worlds were the nightwatchman to step through and have a look.
I introduced the idea of writing a beginning, a middle and end. I asked the children to think of a middle and an end to a story that started with 'The Nightwatchman ran to the picture'. They came up with many ideas eg. He stepped on to the pyramid/into the jungle/in the sand'. They were using prepositions easily within their work.
Their ideas for the endings ranged from 'He came back' to He was eaten'. They published their work in a story board format clearly representing the beginning, midddle and end, with illustrations above their sentences.
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