'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:

1. Nouns: Objects that could go in the night watchman's magic bag using the game setting for ideas.
2. Adjectives: Words that describe (but not necessarily for the objects chosen, but any objects they saw on the game)
3. Verbs: Using the action in the game, the children thought of different verbs.

Children used whiteboards to record ideas, were encouraged to use phonics, but were also assisted by me.
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!

 

 

Activity 2: Instructions
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.