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.