Using Myst 3 for Descriptive Writing

It has been about a year since I began writing about using Myst 3 in the classroom. The last literacy unit of the term saw our Year 5 classes make their first forays into using the game and the second time we have used it in support of writing.

I love to use games in the classroom to support and inspire learning – at their best they are richly engaging and hugely motivating. This year we repeated much of the successful ways of introducing the game slowly; hooking the children into the narrative well before we switched on any computers.  Myst 3 has such a rich narrative and back story this is not difficult to achieve.

One of the major differences in our class work this year was that I decided to take the more conventional route of working on descriptive writing. Last year we completed some great transactional text in the form of game guides. This year I began a simple task of improving on some simple sentences shared in a Google Doc for my students. The kids made such a good start to this that I invested the rest of our time on expanding on what we began.

Here is an example of one of my student’s work in Google Docs – you can see that I added a table of key vocabulary from the Myst narrative.

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The smiley face and marking is something I added as the child progressed with their work. I used Insert>Comment in Google Docs for this (Shortcut: Control+M) These comments are useful in three ways:

  1. Coloured to stand out and be distinct from the rest of the child’s work.
  2. Timestamped automatically so that commenting and marking can be kept a track of.
  3. Named automatically so that a comment belongs to a particular user.

Have a look at my Marking work in Google Docs blog post for more ideas about common assessment of work in this way.

The second comment as I am sure you have realised is from the student who has responded in kind and let me know the changes she has made since my comments. Additionally she refers to some peer assessment that the class did in pairs to help review and improve their writing.

Alongside this work we helped the Year 2 children with their Myst unit – similar in our approach to last year but with different outcomes. The Year 2 teachers wanted their children to create some poetry based around their seaside curriculum unit. The Year 5s acted as Myst guides and helped the younger children explore the island in more detail, develop vocabulary and language collections and ideas for their seaside poems. Once these poems were completed we supported them in some simple Photostory work as a performance of the poems.

It has once again proven to be a hugely successful and engaging unit both within the remit of our own writing and in the process of supporting the younger children to engage with the game as well.

Using the Nintendo Wii to Support My Numeracy Lesson – Block Spot, Symmetry and Visualising 3D Shape

As part of my numeracy lesson yesterday I used our class Nintendo Wii to support some of the shape work we have been doing. I identified the mini game Block Spot within Big Brain Academy as an opportunity for the children to continue to practice visualising and consolidate their understanding of 3D shapes.

After a short times tables test, which we do at the beginning of every week with our Year 5s (9/10 yr olds), I explored some vocabulary and basics of reflective symmetry on a grid using SMART Notebook. We briefly revisited the shape symmetry we had covered in the previous week and I ensured the children were now thinking of a line of symmetry or mirror line independent of any one shape. 

As a precursor to reflecting different shapes in vertical and horizontal mirror lines we used simple colour patterns reflected in a grid and a simple flash activity from Primary Resources. On the class IWB we completed some together and I highlighted some possible areas that could be problematic – we counted the squares to and from the axes and all of the methods used to check the position of reflective symmetry.

reflection

I remember using this in my first year of teaching in a computer suite. On Tuesday the children worked in pairs on our class laptops to challenge each other in making a pattern and then completing the correct reflection. I had planned to continue on to do some work on paper but the practice and familiarity they gained from just working with different coloured squares will contribute to their work later when reflecting shapes. For a challenge children could work on a grid of four quadrants (2 mirror lines) and a random pattern and for those needing more support they could continue with the single mirror line with adult support.

As the children were working on their laptops I had the class Nintendo Wii running with Big Brain Academy and called out a pair of children at a time to use it. I used it in Solo mode and the Practice of the game Block Spot (Visualise category). I would have preferred them to have played against each other or in a small group but that would have included other games – I wanted them to just focus on visualisation of shape to support the week’s topic. In the pair they took it in turns to answer 10 questions about matching a random 3D shape made of coloured cubes to a choice of four. All of the blocks on screen are spinning and so recognising the features quickly and their similarities is tricky.

You can see what they got up to in the Block Spot game in this short film taken during the lesson.

I was pleased to see that the rest of the class were not distracted by the Nintendo Wii being played on the IWB and other then a few cursory glances were getting on with their own reflective symmetry task. The novelty of using the Wii in lessons has already worn off!

The motivator of using the Nintendo Wii as a way to support learning is a no-brainer to me with this age of children and I am pleased to further establish it as a learning tool in the classroom. It is not simply good enough anymore to adhere to the argument that they use too much of these things outside of school – they are very powerful ways to deliver learning and engage children. It is just a case of finding the correct game and context.

I also discovered another game within Big Brain Academy that I would use within any future lessons on symmetry. It is called Art Parts and is described as follows:

In this Visualize activity, players must complete the sample painting by stamping the missing pieces onto an unfinished scene. When it becomes more difficult, Art Parts flips the unfinished scene sideways or flips it upside-down.

There is much more to explore in terms of using the Wii to support the general learning environment of a primary classroom – but I think that in my classroom I have seen it become a source of great fun and an engaging learning tool.

Please let me know any games or ways you have used your own class Wii to support your lessons.

 

Wii Minutes

All of the children in our year group have been enjoying using our class Nintendo Wiis and we have even used them to support the numeracy work that has been going on over the previous week. A student teacher began work in my colleague’s classroom on Monday and was amazed to see him enjoying a game of tenpin bowling on the Wii with some children from his class. She remarked that she was not expecting to see that when she walked in!

In addition to looking at ways the console can support parts of the curriculum, I have added a bit of structure to how we use the Wii just for fun in the class. The children can earn Wii Minutes from me through all the usual avenues of hard work and good behaviour.

Wii Minutes

I have 15 and 25 Wii Minute tickets to give away which would allow someone to play on it during a breaktime or at a lunchtime. I thought it would be fun to have the tickets in the shape of the Wii remotes and on the flipside is the number of minutes as you can see in the picture. I set my teaching assistant on to it and once printed the images of the remotes were backed with gold card and laminated along with the number of minutes – simple.

The children have been motivated and enthusiastic to earn them alongside the usual class reward system we have. Yesterday a pair of children enjoyed a game together who had both earned some time and today a boy who was working brilliantly throughout the morning chose a friend to join him in a blast on Wii baseball.

In my opinion it gives me a great way to reward those children who are always working so hard and do it with a smiles on their faces. The reward is genuinely engaging for them and they love playing it on the big screen with plenty of room to swing the bat or serve an ace.

Using Nintendo Wii Sports for Addition and Subtraction

We have had our Nintendo Wii in our class for about a week now and the children have been busy making their Mii avatars. They have truly engaged with it and seem to appreciate and understand the valuable role it can play in our class to have fun and support learning.

One idea I mentioned a few posts ago was that of using Wii Golf for addition, here are some more lucid thoughts and experiences of using it in the classroom.

Wii Golf Subtraction

We had 20 minutes at the end of the day so as whole class we talked about using Wii Golf to help with some subtraction work. The children have been doing the chunking division method (!) which requires them to use all four operations so more subtraction work was going to be valuable.

Look at mii golf!

Pic: Look at Mii golf!

I started up a quick round of golf and took a shot. I was expecting to get some information about how far the ball had gone and then subtract this from the total yardage for the hole.

Hole Length – Shot length = Distance remaining

However when you have taken a shot in Wii Golf it displays how much further you have to go. There is no information about how far you have hit the ball. Consequently we had to change our sum and I asked the children about how we could work out the shot length – it was a good teaching point. The children at this point had their own small whiteboards to do work on. Our agreed sum for Wii Golf would be:

Hole Length – Distance remaining = Shot length

Soon the children were busy on their boards and were immediately totally engaged with the task. That comes as no surprise to me – about 95% of the class have a Wii at home, this is what they enjoy being engaged with. The shots will always be 3 digits or less and in that way are perfectly differentiated for my year group.

Wii Baseball Addition

Whilst the children were having a break time my teaching colleague Rick and I had a little play on Wii Baseball and soon more ideas for supporting maths were being batted (sorry) around. If you go to the Practice in Wii Sports and then Baseball you get the chance to hit 10 pitches – on screen you receive information about how far you have hit the ball in metres, perfect for generating addition sums.

Nintendo Wii Baseball

Pic: Nintendo Wii Baseball

As a class I showed them what I wanted to do, hitting the ball and recording the length of the shot and then we worked on the addition to come up with the total metres. I asked children to come up and take 10 shots and we all then recorded as they went on our boards. If they didn’t hit the ball we just recorded the metres they did make. I soon discovered a baseball demon who hit about 6 home runs and 10 excellent shots. I asked the class to split the 10 numbers into two groups and then do 2 sums. Again the highest number was 187 metres, which is pretty good for a ten year old by the way, so the addition sums were ideally pitched to the Year 5 age group.

An added bonus was that after you have hit the ten shots the total length of the home runs are added up and displayed on the following screen. So if the children who were batting hit home runs we had to do a second calculation for home run length. i muted the projector display until we had done the calculation, modelled the work and then revealed the answer. 

As a whole class I was able to see on their whiteboard the work they had done and picked up quickly on errors with their method or setting out. However this could easily be done as a small group activity during a lesson. 

The children in that 20 minutes were happy, engaged, focused, on task and doing 3 digit subtraction and addition practice. It is important that we begin to realise the potential of these gaming platforms to support learning. I look forward to exploring more Nintendo Wii ideas soon.

Wii in my Classroom

Wii comes to my classroom

I am delighted to get our Nintendo Wii installed and setup in our classroom. To get the audio working I used a small jack for the connections and ran it from the Wii into the PC’s Line In and then out again to speakers. We have one for each of the Year 5 and 6 classrooms. Not only will it obviously be lots of fun, I am hoping to make the most of the games to support learning. We have the Sports game and also Big Brain Academy which looks good. Soon I will take a closer look at BBA and see what more it has to offer in terms of classroom use, so look out for that soon.

Here is one sketchy idea already: Addition and Subtraction using Wii Golf (part of the Sports game) Use as a maths starter, an engaging way to generate whole class sums or even a small group activity – children take a shot, we subtract from the total yardage for that hole. Written addition of the yards for different shots. Total yards of shots around a short course. The yardage will only ever be into three digits for a single shot – unless I get a go and it will be less! Perfect 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction for the age group of our class.

So much more to explore!

Next week we will be getting the children creating their Mii avatars and I will try to find a way to export those images for use elsewhere. I wish that back when I was ten my classroom was this much fun.