Post written by Lorraine Munro

I’m an Early Years Practitioner in a Primary One (ages 4 and 5) class in Dundee, Scotland. I am also a Promethean Advocate. As a previous ICT Staff Tutor, I was interested in using gaming as a hook to engage young children with all aspects of learning. We often loaned out gaming resources to schools and early years establishments as part of an initiative to support learning in the classroom through Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland’s curriculum for 3–18 year olds. The Learning Teaching Scotland website has a dedicated area to game based learning.

When I returned to school after the summer break, I was really excited to put my experiences into practice. In the last school year, we have used a variety of consoles and games to support our youngsters in their learning. This is our journey through the year…

Writing Using the Nintento DS

We began by using two Nintento DS’ at the writing table. I introduced Pictochat to the children and they practised writing sounds and letters they had been taught by the teacher. They also liked to practise writing their name and it was a great way to encourage emergent writing. They enjoyed ‘sending’ their writing to each other and this activity was a real winner with the boys. They had no problem with the small stylus and, in fact, this really helped with pencil control.

We have approximately ten Nintendo DS’ and are using them across the school. It has been embraced and other classes have used them in different areas:

• Support for Learning has used them to support spelling
• Classes further up the school have used them with the Brain Training game
• An upper school class is about to embark on using them with Professor Leyton to support literacy and problem solving

Learning with Games Consoles

In Primary One, we then moved on to using the Playstation 2 with the Eye Toy. We used the game Play. I would give the children clear instructions on what game was to be played and the children would very quickly pick up the on-screen instructions. The area surrounding the game was set up to support number recognition and I would encourage the children to find their score on the number square. We also looked at Health and Wellbeing outcomes like sharing space, being aware of rules and turn taking.

We were lucky to buy gaming equipment for the school and purchased a Wii and Xbox with Kinect. Primary One children were allowed to try out the Wii and as we were doing a Health topic, we decided on FIT, which is a Dora and Diego game. Although this game is for one player, we had up to four children taking part at any time. One person held the Wii remote but all four children did the activities. Children won medals when they completed a routine so we decided to take this opportunity to support maths and every time the children won a medal they added it to our graph.

We also used the Wii game Just Dance as a whole class activity during our health week. We had four Wii remotes and everyone had a turn to hold the Wii remote and gain a score. This game was a huge success and is now one of our whole school Friday activities.

The next game we used was Yogi Bear. The children were engrossed in a Goldilocks and the Three Bears topic and I was looking at bears in my area. This game was less active, but we adapted the area to look more like Jellystone Park and although this was also a one player game we had two children participating at any time. This meant there was also a peer there to encourage and support when necessary. We moved the writing table beside the Wii area and this encouraged the boys to write and draw about their experiences with the game. Near the end of the topic, we had a Yogi Bear book. The children recorded their experiences of using the game in the book by drawing a picture and writing. Some asked me to scribe for them while others felt confident enough to have a go themselves.

Managing the Logistics

We encountered a few difficulties using the Wii as it was a very popular activity and was very much in demand. This meant that not all the children were getting an opportunity to use the game, as some were always there fast and some would stay on for a while. We devised a simple laminated sheet of all the children’s names and a whiteboard pen. I scored off the name when a child picked the Wii and they weren’t allowed to go back on until everyone had a turn. Once all the names were scored off, we cleaned the name board and we could start again. We also had a ten-minute timer so the children were responsible for setting this when they began the game. We also discussed rules for the game with the children and displayed them. We reminded children of these rules regularly and these complimented our Health and Wellbeing lesson plan within our curriculum

As a school we had also purchased X Box Kinect with Kinectimals. As we had an Animals topic near the end of the school year, we thought this would engage our youngsters and give opportunities for lots of discussion about animals. It did, but also supported all areas of the curriculum. We had to look at a number of different elements to make this work for us.

The area needed to be big enough so the child using the Kinect could be found by the sensor, but we didn’t want children to be using this in isolation from others. This meant we also had to fit in some kind of seating for other children to watch, discuss and support their peer through the game without them also being picked up by the sensor.

At first, using our previous gaming organisation ideas, we all had a turn at interacting with and getting to know the different cubs. We then voted using ActivExpressions about which one would be the P1 cub. We then chose the cub, which was the Black Panther cub and then proceeded into the game. The children taught the cub tricks and played games with it. They supported each other in performing the activities and carrying out the tricks. Lots of different curricular areas were supported, from maths when one child read his score of 295 and others read instructions on the screen hitting literacy outcomes. Experience was gained in Health and Wellbeing outcomes when children showed how they led and supported the learning of others and showed genuine care and understanding in caring for the cub. Overall, this game had a huge learning potential. It is not as easy to use an early years setting as the Wii, but it was well worth the effort.

Working with Pre-School Children

Our latest piece of work with the Wii has come from our transition with our nursery children (up to age 4) moving into Primary One. The nursery children had used the Mii Channel on the Wii console to create Miis for all the children as part of a topic about themselves. This allowed each child to create a Mii with their hair colour, eye colour, face shape and even find the letters in their name. When the children moved into P1, the Wii console came with them. The children have been using the Wii Sports game and bowling. This has given me an opportunity to create Miis for all the children who came to our school not from our nursery. It has also meant that the children can find their Mii when playing the bowling game. Furthermore, this game allows me to observe children who can read numbers to ten and begin early addition.

Our experiences with gaming are still developing and we are always looking for ways to engage our young people. Our latest purchase has been an iPad and we look forward to how we can support our children through their learning in new and innovative ways.