Gaming+and+Literacy+at+George+L.+Armstrong+School

IfI am a grade 6 teacher at George L. Armstrong School in Hamilton, Ontario []

Thanks to many Twitter colleagues I changed the way that I was planning to teach the social studies unit "Canada's Links to the World" [] Many of the interactive gaming our students are doing is with kids around their age, but not around their neighbourhood. With this revelation of Canadian kids linking with other kids around the planet, I started planning this unit anew. This is my first foray into literacy and gaming.

We will learn about Canada and how it links to the rest of the world.
 * __Our Learning Goal:__ **

We identified and described Canada’s economic, political, social, and physical links with the United States and other regions of the world; We gathered relevant information about the domestic and international effects on Canada's links to the world; We explained the relevance to Canada of current global issues and influences;
 * __Our Success Criteria:__ **

We started our Video Games and Canada's Links to the World unit this week. Each grade 6 student is going to be an ambassador from Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, India, Mexico, China or Japan. They will create a video game to teach others what Canada's link is to that nation is and write a user's manual on how to play their game. Their users manual will clearly describe the links between the two nations. They will design and draw a cover for their CD ROM box, and a marketing poster to sell their game.

They started reading Boldprint's __Video Games __ to learn about games and gaming. They especially loved the quotation **"Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock and roll." by the creator of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto **. I wrote down the quotation, but not the author. They did some great inferencing around that one. They gave great guesses on who may have said that and their reasons for their guess. Many of my kids were surprised at the timeline and how it started in the 1950's. They made their own timelines and reflected on the games that they have been playing in the last decade or so.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**__Video Game Review__**

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">On Monday, they will write a review of their favourite video game.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The kids did a great job telling each other about the games that they reviewed, but missed how to review. Using reflective practice and descriptive feedback, we will try again.


 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: 27px;">__Drama Activity__ **

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Looking at Grade 6 Drama expectation B1.1 [] <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Each group had 3 students - a gamer, a game designer and an interviewer. All 3 students played all 3 roles. They each designed 5 questions to ask a gamer and 5 questions to ask a game designer. When one interview was going on the 3rd member of the group was in the "sound proof booth" (hall). The gamer and game designer did not know the questions ahead of time and so had to answer them as in a "hot seat'. Some examples of questions:

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">1. What made you become a game designer? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">2. What is the hardest part of designing a game? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">3. How do you come up with ideas for games? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">4. What is it like to be a game designer? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">5. When did you start gaming? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">6. Why do you game? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">7. Do you design games for all systems? <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">8. What do you do when you find a glitch in one of your games?

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I will continue to update this wiki with successes, stuff not as successful and reflections.