Literacy Now

In the fall of 2012, during my first semester as a middle school language arts teacher, I taught my classes as a multi-player game (MPG). At the start of the year, I invited my students into a world I'd created and dubbed Veritas, and I asked them to take part in an adventure that would weave together tales from our literature study and narratives of their own making. I had a mountain of research to support my instructional choices, but truth be told, standing before them on that first day, I had absolutely no idea if it would work.

p: Tony Dowler via photopin cc

Then they started asking questions.

“I live on this island,” said one eighth grader, pointing to a tiny circular land mass on the map of Veritas. “What's it called?”

“What's the mail system like? How'd we get invites to come train in the capital?” asked a seventh grader.

“My family is from those mountains up north. Do I ride a donkey or something?”

They may seem like simple questions, but they showed me something incredibly important. In asking about the most basic infrastructure, my students revealed that they were buying in to this world, choosing to suspend disbelief, and taking on my challenge to be heroes in an epic story of our making.

My answer to all their questions: “You live there. You tell me.”

In the days and weeks that followed, my students added many points to the map. They invented family bonds, developed my skeleton of a narrative into a rich history, inhabited the texts we studied, and took on active roles within them. They spoke out in defense of their personal interpretations, researched extensively, and wrote pages and pages to tell their own stories.

They became world builders and engaged in powerful literacy practices along the way.

Why Games?

Play, and specifically playing video games, has been a part of my learning process for as long as I can remember. I fondly recall hours spent munching numbers and travelling the Oregon Trail in my elementary school computer lab, and online games like World of Warcraft have made me rethink both how we teach and how we tell stories.

However, we don’t have to be hardcore gamers to incorporate gaming principles into classroom learning activities. We simply need to be willing to take a few lessons that games have to offer. Good games get teaching right in so many ways.

Games offer personal choice and individualized pacing. When we play a game, it might take me multiple tries to master a level or figure out a puzzle. That’s okay. On any given day, I might focus on different areas of gameplay than other players I know. That’s allowed. How can we build similar opportunities for students to work at their own pace and make decisions about how and when they’ll learn our course skills and content?

Some of the best games out there immerse us in their worlds and the tasks at hand because they allow us to decide who we are and how we’ll conduct ourselves. How often do our students go through the points-grabbing motions because they don’t own anything that takes place in the classroom? Allowing my students to make decisions about the world we created together and to build that world for themselves helped them to take ownership of everything aspect of our class learning. The level of agency offered by games and the opportunities for developing identity and voice can be incredibly powerful when leveraged for classroom learning.

Gaming experiences often support teaming opportunities and collaboration. We want students armed with the skills to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and tackle problems together. Ideally, the classroom is a tight-knit community of individuals bound together by a common purpose and similar beliefs about how to get the job done.

Good games nail it when it comes to assessment. Gamers get constant updates about how they’re doing, what their teammates or opponents are up to, and what steps to take to accomplish the next objective. Feedback beyond just a grade is crucial for motivating students to improve their skills.

In games, we stand in fire, die, and learn not to stand in fire again. We fail spectacularly when fighting a boss, research and confer with group members, alter strategy, and win. Learning happens as a result of those failures, and we are okay with failing in games, yet we so often fear failure in the classroom.

However, if we’re looking for mastery of skills, risk-taking, and creativity from our students, failure—followed by reflection and growth—has got to be an option.

Ways to Incorporate Games

When considering making games a part of classroom learning, I believe there are a variety of ways to go.

• Playing Games Designed Specifically for Education
• Engaging Students in a Multiplayer Class Game
• Utilizing Commercially Available Games
• Designing Games

For my initial foray into games for learning, transforming our class into an MPG offered the most opportunities for addressing my students’ literacy goals. This means that students developed their own personas, or avatars, and continuously imagined themselves as characters in a story that I initially developed. Class activities addressing content standards were designed as quests within that imagined world, and completing these quests earned students experience points which allowed their game characters to level up, advancing through the game’s narrative and class content and growing stronger in their abilities over time.

To cap off our school year, and to provide a final method for students to demonstrate skills mastery, we built a final project in which students became game designers themselves. They chose specific content standards from one or more of their other core classes and worked in teams to develop a game that demonstrated those standards. Using the Learning Games Network’s Game Design Tool Kit as our guide for this project and Google Drive for collaborative writing allowed us to address numerous language arts standards, as well.
 
Tips for Getting Started

If you are thinking about using games or gaming principles as a part of your students’ learning, consider the following:

It’s not all about points, badges, and achievements. While these features may be some of the most commonly discussed aspects of gamification, they don’t necessarily lead to greater engagement or more meaningful learning. 

Check out online communities for educators interested in gaming. The folks at 3D GameLab have created a platform for turning any course content into an online game. They’ve also developed a supportive community of educators interested in learning more about the intersection of games and learning and offer both free and paid accounts, as well as a variety of teacher camps for learning more about gaming and other digital learning topics. Additionally, the Games MOOC offers an open online course designed to help participants explore how to use games for learning, and Twitter hashtags like #gbl and #gblchat provide access to ongoing conversations about similar topics.

Start small. My students and I dove immediately into the deep end of gaming implementation and got to learn from many mistakes along the way. Consider applying gaming principles to a single project or unit of study, then build from there.

Communicate with administrators, parents, and students about the learning goals attached to gamified activities. Though a class or project designed with gaming principles in mind may include many of the same learning activities as a more traditional class, those activities may look quite different. Help students to articulate that learning when it is different from what they have experienced in other classes, and help administrators and parents to understand that powerful learning is taking place via class work that looks like play.

Remember one of the best lessons that games have to offer: Be brave. If you’re willing to take risks and learn from failures, you just might achieve something epic.

Laren Hammonds teaches 8^th grade language arts at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her interests include media literacy, cross-curricular collaboration, and the design of learning spaces. Connect with her on Twitter where she goes by @_clayr_, or read more at her blog, Game to Learn.

When I meet up with a group of teachers it is difficult to get us off the topic of teaching in today’s classroom. There are so many opinions about new standards, testing, teacher evaluations…the list goes on. We have a hard time talking about anything else because we are so consumed by the changes we see in our work lives. Many of my colleagues believe we have lost sight of what is most important in our schools—the children.

Having taught pre-K and kindergarten for many years I can’t lie, I am definitely concerned about the push for more direct instruction and testing in our classes. I find it is harder every year to infuse play into my lessons. In many school districts teachers are given the exact amount of minutes per day to teach each subject. Which content area wants the teacher to include the housekeeping center? Which content area should be used for play with blocks?

p: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc

As educators we can make an argument for most social centers and how they fit into our day. But we also see the list of standards, the curriculum and supplements that are supplied to us, the curriculum calendars, and the testing schedules and we may second-guess ourselves and whether we should include those social centers into our day. But I do feel it is our job as early childhood educators to continue to incorporate play-based learning into every content area.

Why is it so important?

In early childhood we have a responsibility to help continue, or in many cases, start that love of learning and school that is so important for our youngsters to have. I fear, as do many of my colleagues, if we push direct instruction all day and every day in early childhood we will hinder the enjoyment of learning. Many of us have also seen an increase in behavior issues in our classrooms. There are a multitude of reasons that we are seeing an increase in negative behaviors. I believe one of the biggest reasons is that our students are pushed too hard and do not have an opportunity to learn to self-regulate through play and social interaction.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) states that children learn in a variety of ways, play is an important vehicle for developing self-regulation, and promoting language, cognition, and social competence. It also states that children’s experiences shape their motivation and approaches to learning (NAEYC, 2013).

Play-based learning helps children to learn from their peers. Children learn to take turns, be flexible in their interactions, solve problems, negotiate conflict, create common goals, delay gratification and build stronger oral language skills. In the play-based classroom a science lesson on the life cycle of a butterfly may first involve reading many books on the topic and then allowing children to explore this topic in small groups. Let the students decide how they want to explore this topic further. It might mean a group project creating a model of the life cycle, and/or creating a poster about the topic. This type of exploration will not only reach many subject areas (math, science, reading, and writing) but will also reinforce strong social skills. Students will learn through interactions with peers how to work together, create goals, and create a shared project.

Compare these activities with a more teacher-directed approach where a student will listen to information about the life cycle, write about it, and finish a sequencing worksheet on the different parts of the life cycle of the butterfly. It isn’t difficult to see which one will engage students in multiple disciplines and build stronger social skills.

What can we do?

The first step, and probably the most difficult, is to be vocal about our concerns about the lack of play in our classrooms. We, as teachers, need to talk about why play is important. We need to let our administrators, school boards, unions, evaluators, and even those in the department of education hear from us about this topic. We also must be able to articulate the key points to our arguments. We can’t just say “it is important for kids to play.” We have to be able to cite the research, know the stages of development, and supply the statistics. Being well-versed and educated on this topic will make our argument more viable and will get the attention of the decision makers.

Now it is our job to start putting our words into action. Let’s start putting play into action in our classrooms. A few simple suggestions to get more play-based learning in our classrooms:

• Centers with a multitude of manipulatives (tiles, cubes, blocks, counters, beans, bottle caps, etc.)—allow the students completely free choice in manipulatives. Once you have used manipulatives in whole group instruction allow children to use free exploration with them. It is amazing how often they will choose to do math in their centers. Modeling of how to record their math in journals and allowing them to use their journals freely during centers will provide open play time as well.
• Math tool time—give students access to scales, weights, chart paper, manipulatives, measuring cups, measuring spoons, beakers, graduated cylinders and allow students to freely explore. Again once you have modeled recording data students are so interested and willing to do this on their own.
• Measuring time—let students measure anything they want with anything they choose. They love this exploration and they learn so much about length and comparison when they get to choose what they want to measure and what tools they want to use.
• Dramatic play—we have done dramatic play for years and unfortunately we use it less and less now. Provide students with costumes, masks, paper, markers, and crayons to make their own scenes, props, and masks. My students love nursery rhymes because they are something they can read on their own after I have introduced them in whole group instruction many times. They love to act out the nursery rhymes. I never asked them to act out nursery rhymes; they just decided one day that it would be a fun thing to do. They make the decisions on which rhyme they want to do and who will play each part.  
• Co-author a book—I love giving students chart paper, construction paper, and a collection of writing tools and allowing them to work in groups and write in any way they want. They come up with many more creative stories and purposes for writing then if I tell them what to write.
• Open literacy centers—allowing students to use lots of manipulatives and different mediums to explore literacy. Give children play-dough, craft sticks, wikki stix, chenille stems, paint, etc. to explore the alphabet and make words. When you allow students to use these tools freely they will be more open to explore inventive spelling and making words in their own way.
• Open science investigations or experiments—once you have done a science investigation or experiment in the class, allow the students access to the science tools and let them choose their own investigation. My students wanted to record their own investigations in their science journals and several of them followed up with their investigations over several days.
• Outside play—after we have played several games together as a group I allow my students to choose their own games. I am always amazed as they set up their own system of rules: who is going to play, who will be “it” first, and even how to win the game. I constantly hear them working through problems on the playground when they set up their own games.

Obviously there are many more ways to incorporate play into our classrooms. We need to give ourselves permission to let free play happen in our classes. Read more about developmentally appropriate play and be able to answer “why are the students using blocks during math time?”

When I started teaching more than 15 years ago early childhood was more about preparing students with the social skills they need to succeed. Today, it seems that we are spending the majority of our time preparing students for academic life. I believe we can successfully do both. I believe with more play-based learning in our classrooms we can instill a love of learning that will last a lifetime and still reach every single standard. I want my students to be prepared for academic success but as they are leaving my class I also want to hear “I had fun today!”

Sam Williams is a kindergarten teacher in Tampa, Florida. He is also a published author, and is a professional development writer and trainer. He owns an educational resource company that supplies resources and professional development for teachers around the country.  You can find Sam at www.sharpenyoungminds.org.

The culmination of a dream of two life-long educators, Mark Condon and Michael McGuffee, Unite for Literacy (UfL) is a website dedicated to the idea of “Book Abundance, where all children have access to books that celebrate their cultures and honor their home languages.” UfL achieves this vision within the “Wondrously Infinite Global Library,” which contains more than 100 books that can be read or listened to anytime and anywhere an Internet connection is available. While these capabilities may be present on a variety of websites that you may already use, what makes UfL unique is the potential to address the diverse range of language found in today’s classrooms. For example, one book, Counting Sheep, includes narration in ten different languages, including Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish. On the other hand, Can You See the Wind? features additional languages such as Arabic, Korean, and Tagalog among the fourteen languages available for narration. In fact, there are 15 languages included across the spectrum of the titles offered with narration. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, as the goal for the site is to eventually be able to support readers in 300 languages. Think about the possibilities for discussions, not only among the learners in your classroom, but with students across the world who have access to the same book!

Additional unique features of Unite for Literacy include the use of all original books in the library and, interestingly, an across the board focus on non-fiction. According to a blog post by Mark Condon, Vice President of Unite for Literacy, this is not an accident. Acknowledging that the website is designed to be a tool for children worldwide, nonfiction was deemed necessary to ensure the books had relevance and meaning across cultures and continents. Children (and adults) can spend time learning about unique foods in books such as My Navajo Taco, personal hygiene in Let’s Brush Our Teeth, or interesting locales in Conservation in Botswana. The library also includes multiple books that focus on universally-applicable math concepts like sorting and counting. These books engage learners using Violet, a character who has a bit of a sweet tooth and a habit of eating the manipulatives, especially candy and cookies!

For users who want more than access to the library, Mark blogs several times a month on a variety of topics applicable to literacy. Furthermore, there is a Facebook page associated with Unite for Literacy that is updated regularly, allowing people to stay abreast of news about Unite for Literacy. In sum, UfL provides unique, engaging materials that can support the range of learners across your classroom as well as open possibilities for communication and collaboration among teachers and students across the world!

Michael Putman is from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Michael.Putman@uncc.edu. 

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG). 

While there may not be a lot of “bells and whistles” Wiggio has a great deal of capacity and potential for use in the classroom. Wiggio (Working in Groups) is free, online, intuitive, easy to use and set up for interaction and collaboration, and can be accessed anytime, anywhere. In my school, we used Wiggio for a middle level book club and as Susan Hall, coordinator of our summer reading program, noted “The kids loved it!” We had tried many different digital tools over time to generate discussion about literature and found with Wiggio that students responded more often, more thoughtfully to postings of peers.  

Functioning like a listserv, learners get email alerts about new postings. Instead of waiting until the night before responses were due, students checked as they were notified, read, and responded almost immediately. Not only did this yield more than the required two responses, but deeper thinking about the ideas shared emerged.  The stream of reading postings as they were developed seemed to afford more time to think and respond.

For the classroom teacher there are useful features to form and manage groups with administrative control.  The groups are private and members must be invited to join so that all that is needed is an email account. Registration is not required, though participants can create profiles once they have accepted an invitation to join a group, remembering not to share private information. As the group is set up, the manager has options for postings to be sent to members by email as created or as a daily summary. There’s also an option that lets the group function as a discussion board with no email alerts. To ease the busy lives of teachers, reminders and alerts can be set up ahead of time and scheduled for release to groups.

Communication, collaboration, and interaction among group members are key functions facilitated through Wiggio. The page layout is straightforward with information about groups and its members on a left panel. Options tabbed at the top navigation bar for “feed, folder, calendar” define the essential workspaces. The feed tab opens the center panel of postings and communications. One can “start a conversation” or engage in existing conversations and easily add multimedia files and web links. The folder tab accesses stored files available to all group members such as group notes, collaborative work in progress, or sharing of resources. Meetings and other dates scheduled show up through the shared calendar tab.

On the right panel of the Wiggio page are many collaborative tools listed for easy access.  Any group member can schedule an in-person event, a conference call, a virtual meeting or a chatroom session and with options to “start right now” or poll members on availability before setting time and place. Group members can create documents, spreadsheets, polls, or surveys and to-do lists to which others can add. Consider the possibilities of the poll feature to get a quick consensus through short answers, yes/no responses, or multiple choice questions. A question could be posed about what a character might do at a critical point in a story, or input on decisions can be sought about a group project, or queries made of reader perspectives on why an author chose to use a particular phrase. The possibilities with this classroom digital tool are many. Explore these links to learn more.

• What is Wiggio? A “Claytorial”
• Frequently Asked Questions about Wiggio
• Kevin Schumann on use of Wiggio

Denise Stuart is from The University of Akron, Ohio. 

This article is part of a series from the Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG)