An Interactive Story

By kylemawer  |  2012/01/20 10:29 Posted in All Posts, Game Plan  |  Comments (0)

Level: Intermediate+

Location: Connected Classroom

Language Focus: 3rd Conditional

Skills Focus: Reading, Speaking

Game: An Interactive Story

Can you help the girl get home through the woods before it gets dark?

This is a nice little game presented as a moving story book.  That is, it looks like a book upon which the drawings of the characters move.  ok, they move in a limited way but it’s got text for reading practice and it looks kind of cute.  At the beginning of the game you get a bit of the background story and some information on what you have to do.  A few pages into the story the game starts in earnest as the girl meets a strange creature and has to decide how to react.  This is where you the reader get to choose what the character does and in effect dictate the course of the story.  I did this on an interactive whiteboard allowing time on each page for my learners to read the story, discuss any difficult language elements, answer some questions (sort of spontaneous comprehension questions) and finally talk about and reach a consensus on what course of action to take in the story.

Preparation

I played the game first and prepared a set of questions to ask my learners.  Having played the game I realised that by asking certain questions I could ‘guide’ my class to make the choices that would bring out the more interesting elements of the story (it was also the longest version).  Here are those questions:

  • What time of year does the story take place?
  • Where was she going?
  • What was the matter with the strange creature?
  • What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t stopped to help?
  • Why do you think it’s a bad idea to stop and play in the park?
  • What would have happened if you had stopped?
  • What does the old man drop?
  • What reward does he give her for returning his wallet?
  • What would have happened if she’s kept it?
  • What does the girl get if she arrives late?
  • What does the girl get when she arrives just in time?
  • What does the girl do after dinner?

Pre-play

  1. I made a copy of the questions above so that there would be a copy for each pair of my learners.
  2. Before I gave them a copy I showed them the screenshot above from the game and got them to predict the story.
  3. After a bit I told them they were all good guesses but these questions may help them guess better.
  4. I handed them the questions, gave them a little time to read and talk about them before getting feedback.

Play

  1. I started the game telling my learners to raise their hand if we reached a point in the story where they could make a guess at the answer to one of the questions.
  2. Difficult language was dealt with reactively and I threw in a few extra questions as they occurred to me even asking questions such as how old did they think she was, what kind of person she was and what her parents were like.
  3. As the choices came up I set my learners in pairs to briefly discuss the choices, answer a question, feedback to the class and then vote on a course of action and explain why.
  4. We repeated the above steps until the story reached its conclusion.

Post Play

Learners told their partner:
  • a recapped version of the story
  • what they thought of the story
  • what they would personally done at each moment

Extra

In class they wrote down the answers to the questions.  Then, they worked with a partner to start writing their own version of a choose your own adventure based on ‘An interactive story’.  For homework they finished this and in the next class swapped their stories with others in the class.  Then, in new pairs they read each story to their new partner and read the story.  I encouraged them to ask questions and discuss the story in much the same way as we’d approached ‘An interactive story’ in the previous class.  They had fun and there were quite a few interesting, funny and imaginative stories created.

 

Free online workshop on Gamification

By grahamstanley  |  2012/01/14 11:06 Posted in All Posts, Research  |  Comments (0)

Come and join us on the free 5 week online workshop on ‘Teaching and Learning Languages through Gamification‘

The workshop, facilitated by Paul Braddock and Graham Stanley is one of a number of similar workshops that have been organised for the annual TESOL Electronic Village Online (EVO).

Over the next 5 weeks, participants will be working together and sharing ideas about using games in language teaching. The workshop, run on Moodle, and which will be archived on the TLLG wiki, also features a series of live sessions with special guest speakers talking about different aspects of games and gamification in language teaching and learning:

In addition, participants will:-

  • be given two special booklets with ideas, tips and lesson plans on how to use online games in class
  • have the opportunity to take part in a special Teacher Development online game

This is the second free online games workshop that Digital Play has been involved in. The first, run in December 2011 for SEETA (South East Europe Teachers Association) is still available for visits and tasks (see below).

 

Competition Winner! Christmas Escape Game

By grahamstanley  |  2011/12/23 19:40 Posted in Game Plan  |  Comments (0)

Congratulations to Nada Purtic, the winner of the Digital Play Christmas competition!

Here, as the last Digital Play blog post of the year, is Nada’s idea for the December Escape Game. Well done Nada! A copy of Digital Play (the book) is on the way to you.

December Escape Game Lesson Plan

Level: Beginners
Language: body parts, furniture, prepositions of place
Function: asking questions (to be)
Skills: speaking
Location: the connected classroom
Game: December Escape Game

Pre-play
Revise vocabulary by labelling body parts and furniture (December Escape Game YLE Worksheet).

Play
Tell your students that Santa has to deliver the presents but has been locked in the room. On top of that, he is missing his clothes. They are to help him find his clothes, find the key and escape the room. There are some things hidden in the room and students’ task is to guide the teacher where to click by asking:  ‘’Is there something behind/under/in… ‘’ .  Find all the missing pieces and help Santa out.

Post Play
Write a letter to Santa.

Thanks for this great idea, Nada, and thanks to all of our readers! Wishing you Seasons Greetings and looking forward to sharing more digital play with you all in 2012!

Escape From Christmas

By kylemawer  |  2011/12/16 04:34 Posted in All Posts, Game Plan  |  Comments (0)

Level: Pre-Intermediate

Location: Computer room

Skills Focus: Speaking

Language focus: Prepositions of place, vocabulary in a house, imperatives (look, go, pick up etc)

Game: Escape Pear Room

The premise is that you get a little bit too drunk each Christmas and the family have decided they’ve had enough and locked you in the house.  It’s up to you to figure out how to escape.

Preparation

You can watch the Escape Pear Room video walkthroughs to familiarise yourself with the game.  This will help you while you are monitoring the activity to predict ahead, input language and guide learners if they get stuck.

Preplay

  1. Tell learners they are going to see 4rooms and they will have 25 seconds each to write down any words associated with Christmas that they can see.
  2. Open the game and move through the four rooms allowing 25 seconds on each for learners to write down the words.
  3. Feedback in open class making sure all learners know the meaning of the words they have written down.
  4. Go through the 4 rooms again and ask learners to describe where any of the difficult words are or any objects that they don’t know the name of in English.
  5. Explain a little about the game and say here’s the start and show some of the video walkthrough.  Show enough so that learners see a few of the puzzles being solved.
  6. Elicit how you play the game and what you do at the start.

Play

  1. In a computer room gather learners round a single central computer and open the video walkthrough.  It may be a good idea to open one of the videos on one internet explorer and the other video walkthrough on another.
  2. Tell learners that they can play the game in pairs and if they get stuck they can come to the video, watch a little bit and go back to their partner and tell them how to play a bit of it.
  3. Put learners in pairs and get them on the game. Tell one of the pair that for 5 minutes they are the gamer.  The other is the watcher and they go back and forth to the video walkthrough.
  4. Start the activity.  Monitor to ensure learners are using English and encourage them to use the words from the preplay activity.
  5. Swap gamer and watcher roles after 5 minutes.

Post Play

  1.  Learners write directions to  the end of the video.
  2. Learners record vocabulary items from the game and make a Escape Pear Room dictionary.
  3. Learners write a Dear santa note explaining the story and wishing to escape.

 

 

Merry Quizmas

By kylemawer  |  2011/12/10 22:56 Posted in All Posts, Top Tens  |  Comments (3)

It’s the run up to Christmas and one way to have fun, learn a little about Christmas and get some reading practice in is to do a class Christmas Quiz.  Here is a selection of 10 Christmas Quiz ideas to try out with your learners.  Remember – if they think they can do better than the ones on offer then either make one yourself using these to inspire you or even get your learners to make their own.

1 Christmas facts

Test your learners knowledge of Christmas with these ten questions.  You can either get them to write down their answer and pass it to the next person to mark (before returning it) and then take a class poll on what they think the right answer is.  I always throw out a few bonus points as they come to me.  After the question on the left I asked them to write down the names of the other reindeers, then looked them up online and gave out bonus points for each – it kept the game a little more exciting.

2 Around the World

If you liked the last Christmas Quiz then give this one a go too.  I think the questions are a little harder but if you think your learners are up for it then why not give it a go.  You can always play this quiz straight on the end of the last one if you are looking for a quiz with more than just 10 questions.  Play these two and you’ve doubled the amount of questions to 20.

3 Q’wick Q’westion Q’west

I don’t know how your multiple computer access situation is but when my learners are on a computer in pairs I’m lucky enough to have a large screen connected to a computer at the front of the class.  Learners told me where to click (moving from the reindeer towards the candy cane) and when they saw the question I gave them until the first pair said “next” to find the answer on the internet.  I then took the direction the pair that said next told me to take in the game.  This continued until we had finished.  If you want to be extra sneaky (and give slower ones a little more of a chance) then get learners to write the answer down.  You can then (sneakily) get them to write out questions to the answers they have written down at the end of the game.

 

4 CBBC Christmas Quizzes

The CBBC website has a few fun christmas quizzes up.  The nice thing about this page is that there are a few quizzes there for learners to work through autonomously on computers.  You can monitor and help with language (or even set an online dictionary for them to use) while learners take each quiz in turn.  Encourage them to make a note of how many points they score in each so that you can declare a winner at the end of the activity.

5 IWB Christmas Quiz

 

A downloadable interactive PowerPoint Quiz for Christmas from the people at tes. No searching questions here – just 15 multiple choice questions based around Santa, The Nativity and Traditions. Click on the correct answer and you’ll get a ‘Well Done’, but click on the incorrect answer and you’ll get a ‘Try Again’ for the opportunity to go back and have another go.

6 DIY Quizzes

Well sometimes it’s best just to do your own quiz so you can grade the language, add your own images and effects or simply so that it can be saved on a network computer for other teachers to use.  If this is the case then check out this website for a large list of Christmas questions and answers.  The site invites you to cut and paste but I find it’s a good idea to check their spelling and grade some of the language there for your own purposes.

7 More Merry Christmas Resources

 

This site has a mix of all the above.  There are interactive quizzes, ideas for questions with answers and explanations as well as video quizzes with audio.  It’s a bit like going to Santa’s grotto and having a lucky dip grab – you might be lucky and find something you really like here.

 8  Christmas Carols

If you are feeling extra adventurous then one idea might be to have a Christmas quiz that goes with Christmas Carols.  This quiz focusses on just that.  What would be great now is if you can find all these carols online on a video sharing site and play them while the question is up there.  Hey Presto!  You have a listening and reading activity.  Would be a great one to do but sadly I have two more ideas to come up with for this post so I’ll leave this one for you.

 

9 Triviapark Christmas Quiz

If you are not feeling so inspired to make your own Christmas Quizzes and you are simply looking for more to use in the connected classroom then here’s a nice little website.  There’s a novice level quiz as well as a regular level quiz, which is a little trickier, and also a more challenging expert level.  It’s worth making a note of the website too as there are a load of quizzes on all sorts of topics here.

 

10 PowerPoint Quizzes

There is some demand for downloadable PowerPoint quizzes that have already been made for you.  Here are some more.  A word of warning though – these have not been made with English language learners in mind so a little tweeking here and there may be needed.  Good luck!

Language Teaching with Online Digital Games

By grahamstanley  |  2011/12/05 15:34 Posted in Game Buzz  |  Comments (3)

Digital Play is pleased to invite everyone to participate in a free online course this December in Language Teaching with Online Digital Games held on the SEETA (South Easter Europe Teacher Associations) website.

The course is an introduction to using online games in the ELT classroom and is free for anyone who wants to attend. The idea is for us to explore the use of digital games in the classroom from 5th-15th December. There will be games to try out, questions to ask your students, discusssions about the value and classroom practice using digital games, and there will be an opportunity to create your own ‘Pick-a-Path’ game using the photo management software, Flickr, at the end of the course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There will be six topics during the course, which are:

  • Introduction to online games
  • Games to encourage speaking
  • Games to practise listening
  • Games for reading & writing
  • Games and grammar & vocabulary
  • Games projects with classes

Hope to see you there!

Competition Time

By kylemawer  |  2011/11/26 01:35 Posted in All Posts  |  Comments (1)

Christmas is coming and we’ve got a copy of Digital Play: Computer games and language aims up for grabs.  All you have to do is find a Christmas game online and create a language learning activity around it.  Instructions need to be clear enough for a teacher to repeat it with their class, fun enough to engage the learners and have sound enough pedagogy to please just about everyone.  Just take a look at some of the ‘game plans’ from this blog for a better idea of what we’re looking for.  Here is a picture of the prize itself:  To read a little bit more about it just click on the link:

Digital Play

This book was written by both Graham and myself and we are particularly proud of it.  This teacher development book starts with a look at the state of play in gaming with an eye cast specifically on education and language learning.  It’s also packed full of ready to use digital play activities covering a range of classroom scenarios from no available technology, through one computer and a projector to multiple computers.  If you are a fan of this site then this book is (in our biased opinion) a must.

Closing date for the competition is the 8th of December.

Good Luck!

 

Send your competition entry to: kylemawer@yahoo.com

 

 

Building a sustainable city with Enercities

By grahamstanley  |  2011/11/18 09:30 Posted in Game Plan, Uncategorized  |  Comments (0)

Level: Intermediate+

Location: Computer room, class set of laptops (or game play for homework)

Skills Focus: Reading, Speaking

Game: http://www.enercities.eu

Enercities is a computer simulation game which lets you build your own city. It is suitable for  intermediate and above students and worth playing for the vocabulary of cities and discussion possibilities. Topics that are relevant include: Cities, Politics, Money, Renewable energy, Global warming, etc.

The aim of the game is to build a sustainable city with a population of 200. It’s probably best played in a computer room or with a class set of laptops. Alternatively, you can introduce the game to the students and ask them to play at home.

There is quite a lot of reading in the game, so I recommend looking at the instructions how to play with the students, letting them play and then doing a post-game follow-up discussion about their results and the best strategies for playing the game.

Here’s a class handout (PDF): Digital_Play_Enercities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tanooky Tracks – A Gaming Circuit

By kylemawer  |  2011/11/11 03:13 Posted in All Posts, Game Plan  |  Comments (0)

Level: Upper Intermediate

Location: Computer room

Skills Focus: Reading

Game: Tanooky Tracks

A Tanooky is a playful but mischievous spirit that likes to possess objects that most resemble its unique personality the most.  In this game you have to find and collect the objects associated with each of the 12 Tanookies in order to find them.  Why?  Because they are getting up to too much mischief.  If you can find them you are helping the occupants of the house, who are being terrorised by the Tanooky presence in their home, get rid of them (see left).

Luckily in the game there is a nice little hint book (see below) that tells you about each Tanooky and points you in the right direction as well as clues as to what objects to look for.   You can see where to click to read the hint book at the bottom of the house on the left.  You can click on this at any point while you are playing the game.  The clues and hints on each Tanooky consists of a riddle and some visual puzzles to mix it up a little.  If you look at the back of this book there are even more hints in case you are really stuck.

The nice thing about this game is that not only is it a visually attractive game with written text to support it but you can also choose to start with which ever Tanooky you like (of course, your learners don’t get to choose the order – you do!). That is, you can deal with them in any particular order.  I like this because sometimes when you have lots of learners playing the same game they can cheat by asking for / giving help using their own native language.  Because this game allows the teacher to dictate the order in which they take down each Tanooky.  Groups of learners will generally be playing the game at a different point.

The teacher can use a walkthrough as they monitor to ask learners guiding questions and help them solve the trickier riddles in the hint book.  Digital Play provides you here with links to the game, the walkthrough and a worksheet.  The latter is for the  learners which gives both extra help (if they need it) on solving the riddles and sets the order for each group to play the game.

Here’s the lesson plan:

Preparation

Print off a copy of the walkthrough and worksheet.  Cut the worksheet cards out (there’s a double copy in case groups overlap and need to look for the same Tanooky).

 

Pre-Play

  1. Hangman ‘Tanooky’.  Ask them what this means.  They won’t know so read them the explanation from the first line of this blog.  Tell them a bit about the game too if you like.
  2. Divide the class into 3, 4, 6 0r 12 groups depending on how you will organise them on the computers.  Deal the cut up worksheet equally amongst the groups.  Tell the groups to read the pieces of paper and make notes in their notebooks.  Their notes should include the name of the the spirit and any answers they might like to guess at.
  3. Collect back all the cut up worksheet cards.
  4. Go to the computer room.  Learners take their notes with them.

Play

  1. Learners find the game online and play the tutorial.
  2. They then take one of the worksheet cards and find that Tanooky spirit in the game.
  3. When they have solved that worksheet card they can get a different worksheet card.
  4. When one group has found all the tanooky spirits stop the game.

Post Play

  1. If learners didn’t finish the game they can complete it at home.  The game, walkthrough and worksheet can all be found here.
  2. They can look at the house in the game and invent their own tanooky spirit.  They describe it and explain what objects it’s connected to, how to find it and write a riddle.

If you can think of any other spin off activities you could do with this game then please feel free to tell us all about it in comments.

 

 

Reward or Punishment: Gamification with Class Dojo

By grahamstanley  |  2011/11/04 10:33 Posted in Game Buzz, Game Plan  |  Comments (2)

Class Dojo (http://www.classdojo.com) is a realtime behaviour management system for teachers who have an internet-enabled computer and a projector (connected classroom)or IWB.

You start by creating an account and setting up a class by typing in the names of your students. Avatars for each student are automatically generated during this process.

In class, you select a student and award a positive point for behaviour such as creativity, hard work, presentation, etc.

You can also award negative points for bad behaviour, when a student doesn’t bring homework or if he/she arrives late, etc.

Think of it like a digital star chart with added extras. The points can be awarded individually or, by selecting all students, you can give everyone a point. On the board, you can show only the positive or only the negative points the students get.

You can also undo if you make a mistake or change your mind, and it’s possible to reset all points to zero too. So far so good, but what makes Class Dojo really interesting is that once the class has ended, the programme displays a pie chart with the results of all student behaviour.

If you use Class Dojo every class, then you can select periods of time (days of the week, terms, etc) to display records of. You can also choose individual students and display their progress.

These are report cards that you can print off (on paper or PDF) for your own records or to give to the students or parents. You can also add and change the behaviour categories when you select ‘edit class’. This way you can tailor make the programme to suit the behaviour you want to reward or stop in your own class.

All in all, Class Dojo looks like it is a great way of gamifying the behaviour of your class and could work well for many teachers. A great find! Please let us know here if you find it useful.