Don't Panic

With a huge number of teachers strugglling with illness the possibility of leaving the safety of the ICT room and working in a classroom all day reared it's head today. We were warned last night that this might be necessary due to the likely absence of several at a staff meeting after school yesterday.

Having attended a meeting regarding a forthcoming conference in Hong Kong until 9.30 last night (more on this later), preparation for a full day in the classroom was always going to be a bit rushed. However, armed with ideas from the likes of Tom Barrett and Derek Robertson I decided to try a little experiment and teach the day's lessons with the help of a Nintendo Wii.


Our Literacy lesson would have been spent looking at Endless Ocean and using the underwater environment to stimulate writing, whilst Wii Sports Golf is a great way of tackling aspects of mental maths.

Soon after arriving in school it was clear that a number of our ill members of staff had dragged themselves out of their sickbeds to man the classrooms - why do teachers do that?! - so I wasn't required.

Undeterred though, I set about trying to get the Wii to work on one of our Promethean whiteboards. The video was no problem but the sound proved to be tricky and a few different combinations of speakers and adapters were required before things were sorted. Ms Li had a quick spin with Endless Ocean and proved herself to be an excellent diver. First glimpses of Endless Ocean indicate that it could indeed be used as a stimulus for writing and as soon as I can convince one of the class teachers or year groups to dive headlong into an ocean based cross curricular project I'll be all set!

Our P4 class were the first to use the Wii as we used the golf game as a way of practising addition and subtraction. Golfers hit the ball whilst their classmates worked out how far they had hit by subtracting the distance left from the total distance of the hole. The maths worked fine, but as anybody who is familiar with golf knows, it's not really that simple as the ball rarely (for me) goes in a straight line. P5 students did a similar activity, but as they have been using spreadsheets in recent lessons, they had to calculate the distance hit by entering a formula into the cells.

Students in both classes worked enthusiastically and enjoyed the novelty of the Wii as a context for their work. The activities we worked on were fairly simple and were only really an experiment to see whether the device could be set up to run in a classroom. Now we know that it's possible and some simple tasks have been started, we now need to look at how we can create a more comprehensive module of work like the one Derek Robertson talks about in the link above.

Using Computer Games in Literacy

As anybody who takes a vague interest in this blog knows, I am very keen that students have opportunities to use computer games within their studies. Tim Rylands and Derek Robertson are two educators who have pioneered the use of COTS (commercial off the shelf) games within the classroom, using them as a means to making the curriculum more engaging and culturally relevant.

Robertson's work is particularly interesting as it attempts to add academic validation through a research project looking at the use of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training. His recent invitation as the keynote at VITTA shows that people are beginning to take note.

Our ICT curriculum here at Kellett has a module in each Key Stage 2/3 year looking at computer games. This also informs work on games design at the top of KS2 and into KS3. However, the real importance of looking at games is in the wider curriculum. For two years we have worked on a module using the simulation game Rollercoaster Tycoon as a basis for Literacy work at year 5, tackling aspects of persuasive language and research. The point with this type of activity is that the computer game is merely the stimulus for pupils, similar to a text, an image, or even a visit.

Last year our Year 5 students were introduced to the online game Samorost2, a problem solving activity. They loved the game and the difficulties the character faced so much that many of them carried on working on the problems at lunchtimes and at home.

Inspired by the work of Kim Pericles in Australia I sat down earlier this term with P6 teacher Katie Hitchcox and introduced her to the mysteries and intricacies of the first Samorost game. From there Miss Hitchcox planned the use of Samorost into her Literacy work; a two week module looking at story settings within a fantasy genre..... here's what happened.

Students were introduced to the game and encouraged to work in small groups to solve the problems and help the main character to save his planet. Interestingly, whilst many of the adults involved in this project had found the problem-solving aspects quite difficult (impossible, actually!!), the students worked well together and had clearly plenty of digitally native experience in this type of activity. Although the seven levels of the game were challenging, by the end of the first Literacy session most of the groups were nearing completion.

After spending time with the game, students then discussed aspects of narrative writing, taking notes on each scene before looking at creating powerful openings to their stories. To enhance their understanding of narrative, setting and character, the class then moved to the Drama Studio where they used a variety of techniques to help them understand the situation and feelings of the characters. Many of the pupils felt this was very helpful when they were working on their writing. Alongside the specific tasks within Literacy there was an ongoing writing task requiring pupils to write a story based upon the game. Most of the work was done in class using laptops.

What is Samorost?


Working As a Team


Samorost in Drama


Using Samorost to help Writing


Persuasive Language with Samorost


Writing Example 1


Writing Example 2



During the second week of Literacy, students focussed specifically on the fishing scene from the game, using figurative language to describe setting and including personification, simile and metaphor. To extend their work further, students also looked at the genre of advertising and created an advert for a future release of the game, Samorost3 assumably!

The images below are extracts from pupil work, click the arrows to move through them.

More to follow!