Writing with Portals.

As I earlier explained, in year 6 we have been using the game Portal and Portal 2 as a stimulus for some creative writing. The focus was on using vocabulary to build an atmosphere.

We began the project by exploring the opening level from the original game. The narrative is almost absent, as we (the players) are plunged into a mysterious laboratory with only an occasional disembodied voice for company.

The children were all gripped and we did a vocabulary harvest, concentrating on feelings and specific, descriptions of the  stark, clinical environment.

The only real challenge was explaining the concept of the 'portals' around which the game's central mechanic revolves. Put simply, you have a device that can place 'holes' on most surfaces, in through one and out through the other. 
For children who were familiar with this game - about a third of the class - it was fine, for the others we had to allow a 20 minute session one afternoon to play through a few levels and understand it.

The next day we explored theories as to why our character was here, where exactly 'here' was and who would be behind it. Theories were impressive and tremendously detailed - the children had been thinking about this! 

We played a few narration games, with a child reading their opening paragraph, and another walking through the environment to match. The discussions that followed these lead to a good breakthrough with a few less confident writers on the importance of extending description, taking the time to do so and the power of well chosen vocabulary - Hurrah!

I felt really happy with the progress in narrative description and vocabulary choices. The blank canvas of the game world was a perfect opportunity to provide a wealth of stimuli for the class. The 'narrator game' was an excellent way of starting a discussion on descriptive writing, and the children were able to literally show the details they enjoyed, or felt should be added to.

This from one of my foundation group:

 This from the standard group - a writer who previously had struggled with not moving her writing forward at 100 mph!

 As a reward, the children are designing their own puzzle levels in the Portal 2 Education edition game. Details on how to participate in this educational beta test can be found here.

 The cross curricular links for this physics-based puzzle game are huge. I am really looking forward to the next few weeks...