Teaching Ideas 1 (EduGaming)

EDUGAMING

‘Edugaming’ program with a primary class consisting of 12 nine- to ten-year old B2 level language learners. Chose an online game called Nº5 from a company called ‘3wish’ (www.3wish.com/game/game.htm) to use with primary class. The criteria for choosing a game from this particular series was based on the fact that they are easily accessible online, they are free, the graphics are cartoonist and appealing and the content appropriate for the learners. In preparation, it is decided to write a ‘walkthrough’ of the game for the children – this is a simple set of instructions (with screenshots) for completing a challenging puzzle game. A screen capture video of someone playing the game (on YouTube) and then wrote a walkthrough, down-grading the English appropriately. The challenge for writing a walkthrough is generally to avoid the word ‘click’, thus increasing the range and complexity of the language content for the children. this also prepared a worksheet for a pre-game task, identifying language elements within the walkthrough that it considered might pose difficulty for the children; in this case a words and pictures matching game. Along with the walkthrough, gave each pair of students some key comprehension questions to consider during game play. This helped focus attention on descriptive language and prepositions of place; language that should be within their immediate grasp such as ‘it’s above my head’, or ‘the book is on the shelf’. Each pair was also encouraged to engage in ‘play dictation’, where learners work in pairs to relay useful information to their gaming partner. Preventing mime and gesture, by getting the child who is relaying the information to sit on their hands, can be useful to prevent partners simply pointing at the screen, defeating the purpose of the task. This careful staging enabled completion of the game in a relatively short space of time. Fortunately the game sits within a series, and fast finishers were directed to a walkthrough for the next game in the series, which had been written out and placed on a wiki page for easy access by the children.

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