Game based learning has been a favorite of my teenage students for the past 8-years. I have been able to correlate my love of video games into many lesson plan creations, which I incorporate into my classroom
As with any teacher, I’m always looking to create new and innovative ways to reach my students, grasp their attention and motivate them in new and meaningful ways. One manner in which I have had great success in reaching my teenagers of the digital age are my video game and educational learning experiences. However, those who are not necessarily into video games or are at a loss of how to bring such an experience to their classroom could easily become overwhelmed. Remember . . . this is simply one way of MANY that you could incorporate video games into your instruction.
Therefore, the purpose of this entry is to help one easily create a simple writing exercise utilizing one of my video game play through clips.
Tip #1 - Decide on the Big Idea
What concept/skill do you wish to teach or improve upon with your students? This is key, otherwise you're aiming for a bullseye that doesn't exist (i.e. you'll never hit your mark.)
For our purposes here, we're going to say our purpose is to get students to write in four different sentence form structures (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex)
Tip #2 - Create Working Template
Create your student work document (Google Slides, Google Docs, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) just as you would for any other activity.
"If you're not having fun, try a new direction." – Teach4Endurance
Tip #3 - Choose Video Game Clip
For the quickest and easiest way to find a suitable video for your chosen outcome, search YouTube for video game clips. Find one that works for your goals and that is also AGE APPROPRIATE for your student's ages and maturity levels. There's no shortage here, but I'm simply going to share my YouTube channel here. I have a boatload of video game clips from my play throughs. Think of my channel as a video game clip mixtape.
Tip #4 - Make Expectations Clear
Even though this example is very small in scale, it's always important to make your learning experience expectations clear to your students. In this example, the expected outcomes are to:
1. View the video
For viewing the video, you can do a couple of things. You can simply copy/paste the share link from the YouTube clip (seen below) into the student's document; or you can go to the desired video and play it on a projection system (smart board) if you have one.
2. Get inspired and write
Create three sentence examples (for each sentence form) based on the video game clip. The students are to use observations from the provided clip to construct their sentences. For this activity, it's also helpful to provide the background information below:
Final Thought
If you struggle in getting your students to put a pen to paper (or finger to keyboard), and you're willing
to embrace something different, then embedding video games into your instructional practices may possibly help. If interested in trying this easy activity out, feel free to visit my teaching store for the full document.
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