Literacy Skills & Video Game Design: A Perfect Collaboration

 Video games, my students love them! They love gaming from Mario Cart to Minecraft. I am not a video game fanatic or even a casual gamer but I see the appeal of the format. Video games are engaging, fun and exciting and they are a format for storytelling. Some of the more advanced video games have complex worlds, characters, plots and storylines. So it made perfect sense to create a project that connected literacy and storytelling skills with video game making for my first graders. This project allowed me to make connections with the literacy skills that we are developing and what is happening in the classroom and accomplish some of our technology goals in one fun project.

Over the school year there is a common thread when I am sharing a book with my first graders, we talk about the setting, characters, the journey of the story, beginning, middle and end of the story and how those elements are all connected. With this project, I started the introduction following this process. We read one of my favorite books, The Great Gracie Chase. I like this book because of the simple fun storyline and the great illustrations. The book is the story of Gracie the dog,  who is upset when the painters at her house disrupt her quiet house and she is put out for barking. Gracie is deeply offended at this, so she decides to take herself for a walk, something she is not permitted to do. Then everyone in the town starts chasing Gracie to stop her, the race is through the town and more and more people join the chase, until everyone is worn out and Gracie then walks herself back home where it is quiet again.

We created a chart that shared all the details of the story; beginning, middle and end, characters, setting and how all those elements were connected in the book. We talked about the setting of the town and how it connected to the character of Gracie and how the beginning, middle and end flowed with the setting and Gracie. After we documented the elements of the story, we had a conversation about video game design. Many of the video games also have elements of storytelling including characters, backgrounds, protagonists and challenges. We talked about how video game designers work for years to create all of these parts of the game and make sure that their game connects and makes sense.

Next, I shared with students that they would be designing and building their own video games based on a story that they created. The first step was to storyboard and come up with the outlines of their game/story. I modeled my storyboard based on the Great Gracie Chase. I shared that my main character was Gracie the dog, the villains were a bicycle and a paintbrush, based on the people who chased Gracie, her power ups were hotdogs, a food she loves and a goldfish, her best friend,  and the points to collect in the game were dog bones. The setting and background was a neighborhood with a street, houses and trees. The goal was to get Gracie back to her house, the path that the story followed.

Students started by drawing pictures of their main character/hero, then their setting/background, their villain/protagonist and power ups, items their characters could collect to get new lives and powers. We talked about how they were telling a story with their games and needed to make sure that the elements of the game were connected. After the students sketched out their game elements and explained their stories it was time to move to the next step. 

Next, I introduced the app Bloxels. Bloxels is a game building program. The user designs different elements of the game, characters, power ups, villains, etc and allows the user to program the different elements with different features, like powers and lives. The program also uses color blocks for the code. The student is able to place the color coded blocks in the game to program where ground, water, hazards, power ups, villains are in game. The color coded blocks make this video game design program accessible for younger students, they are able to program and code the games following the color system so it is a perfect tool for emerging readers to feel successful in game and coding design producing a fun and impressive game to play.

The students spent several class sessions making their game elements in Bloxels and then coding and building the game in the program. The students connected the coding with their design elements and then tested and had other students test their games. They made different edits to the game based on feedback making sure that all the elements of their game worked, that their game was fun and challenging. (Learner III.C.1)

The final step was to publish the games and have a big gaming day. Students used the feedback I like, I wish, I wonder. After they play a classmate game, the student knows what they like about the game, what they wished they had changed about the game and what they wonder could be added to the game. This feedback routine helps students to expand on their feedback beyond “I liked it, it was fun” and also stays positive by sharing what they liked first and gives suggestions for changes as well as for advancing the game.  (Learner III.C.1)

This was a great project that connected literacy skills and terms that students work in the classroom, connected with coding, design and technology and wrapped it all up in video gaming, something that the students love! They had so much fun with their project and were so proud of the games they created!