Playing With Objectives

"Mr. Renard, this is fun."

"I know.  Learning can be fun, right?"

"We're learning?!"

"Yep, transitions and putting events in order."

"Oh, wow, that is really cool."

Last week in reading we were reviewing a bunch of different skills.  I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to try something out.  One of the many reading comprehension skills we work on is sequencing events.  Teaching kids not only to put events in order but to use transition words like first, next then, after that, and finally.

With this skill in mind I went to the first Little Big Planet game looking for a basic level that had some random events but would be easy enough for my students to play.  My thought was go to the first world and pick an unforgettable level; I choose Skate to Victory.

Early in the week I sat down and played the level noting five events that took place during the level.  I was purposefully looking for things that would not be obvious to the children, that way they would have to pay attention to what was going on.  The events listed were...

• ride down a hill on a skateboard with Humpty Dumpty
• climb a haunted tower with some help from boots
• saw a king in a sub marine
• jump across a canyon using windmills to go farther
• open a gate using a jetpack

The students played in reading groups, which have four kids in each.  They had a little more than 15 minutes to complete the activity.  We have two controllers so I let two kids play at a time and they had two switch when they got to the second room of ghosts.   Students that were not playing had to keep track of the order of events.

The activity had some real positives and some things that need refining.  First, the kids were always engaged, even the students who were not directly playing.  They did a really nice job of discussing the order of events. When discussing the events they were using the transition words, and they were able to write the events in correct order using those transition words.  One down side was because some kids don't have much experience with games, or Little Big Planet in particular, playing through the level took all of their time and they had to finish the next morning.  That is not the end of the world, but this is the reason I try to keep the stuff I make for them fairly simple and straight forward.

Overall, it was a good first attempt at using official levels in class.  It is just a matter of finding the right objective to work with.