Sometimes after a week of adventurous and experimental learning, it’s good to have a few days reflection. But suddenly a week has passed since the end of our DS week! So what did I learn from the experience? And more importantly, what did the children learn?
First – what did I learn that will affect how I approach a gaming week of this type in the future? In no particular order:
- the walls aren’t thick enough in school – only one or two groups can play on a game simultaneously – implications are that using the game to collect data might benefit from an extended period of collection time. For collecting the time data, I think I’d set up the game for groups to take part in on a rolling programme basis in the few days prior to the maths lessons I wanted the data for.
- whilst the visualiser was a great way of showing what was on the DS screen for class discussions, eg during literacy sessions when we were trying to develop descriptive language, it might be clearer to use another type of console such as a Wii or playstation.
- Pictochat was a great alternative to individual whiteboards – pupils were able to see more comments, share ideas with more people (and if you get more ideas, the snowball effect happens and you have more ideas to use in your own writing).
- Pictochat was great for competitive type starters – putting children into 2/3/4 teams to come up with the most improved sentence, best collaborative solution to a maths question, etc
- Pictochat was most effective in the first 2/3 occasions of use – like all tools it can be over-used. The tool would be great to use once or twice a week, balanced with other tools to add a bit of spice and variety to what we are doing.
- Clear guidelines and expectations help the pupils to get the most out of pictochat – eg are they going to be allowed to write the “hi” messages at the start/end of the work, discussing what is/isn’t appropriate to put in, misuse means not joining in the game – laying down groundrules (as happens in class all the time), being reiterated and applied to this more novel learning situation.
- the content of the game was more important when considering how to support learning than the means by which it was delivered – I should have called it a “Mario and Sonic at the Olympics Week” rather than a DS week!
- motivation levels were high! And the chance to earn an extra bit of “playing” time was also motivating!
- despite the stimulus for writing and modelling, 2 or 3 children needed a lot of support to get their heads around developing a story about the game – writing frames, 1:1 support and small group work helped this.
Second, what did the children learn?
- we used the learning objectives we would have covered using more traditional methods
- to convert units of time – I think it went more smoothly because the context was relevant
- to explore the meaning of tenths and hundredths in decimal places – we consolidated prior learning by applying the knowledge in a relevant context
- to collect, evaluate and present data – tally charts, frequency intervals, graph drawing
- to discuss relevant issues in the news
- to consider different solutions to a dilemma
- to use “concrete” experiences in game playing – what they saw in the scenery and characters – to develop descriptive writing
- to use more tools for self and peer assessment (via pictochat)
The stories were very interesting! There was a range of outcomes, with some very imaginative scenarios being included. An imaginatively created character called metal Sonic had his arm broken off in training but apparently went on to win gold against the odds! A rather gory version of the story had a character in the ski jump dive head first into the snow and “since there was no one there to pull him out, he got frostbite in his head and it fell off.” I think the main thing was that the children enjoyed their writing this week.
The spin-off lessons this week were equally successful, as pupils used the context of Mario and Sonic to build alarms to protect the gold medals – thus killing several birds with the stone, as efficient organisation of learning experiences can do! A bit of science with circuits and conductors, a bit of D&T to build the rooms and alarms!
Would we do it again? Yes. The benefits outweighed the slight technical hitches, the technical hitches were not insurmountable, the motivation levels were high, the children are still talking about it – let’s hope it proves to be one of those memorable learning experiences when they look back on their time at school.
