Using 2 Do It Yourself to promote writing - year 5

Back in the spring term, we decided to run a parallel project in years 1 and 5 at Becontree Primary School. We wanted to use 2Do It Yourself, from 2Simple, to promote writing.

In Year 5 we started by discussing what made games appealing to them. We looked at various online games and children came up with a list of a 'top 3' features they wanted to see on games.

There was great excitement when I told the class that they were going to be game developers for the Year 1 children to play. Having never used the 2DIY software before, the class and me, found it very interesting.

After a little exploration, the children started to design and create their own games. It certainly got the children engaged and many were taking their work home and working on it at play times. This led to some very good teamwork as well as some intriguing discussions between the children.

Most of the pairs completed their games and again, there was plenty of discussion about ways to improve their end products. Unfortunately we were unable to share our games with the Year 1 class. The class were disappointed about this after the effort that they had made.

With regards to improving writing, some of the boys were more involved in writing plans/instructions for the games. However I'm not sure if it had a huge impact on everyone. However it was a very worthwhile experience, both for the pupils and myself.

Using 2 Do It Yourself to promote writing - year 1

Back in the spring term, we decided to run a parallel project in years 1 and 5 at Becontree Primary School. We wanted to use 2Do It Yourself, from 2Simple, to promote writing.

In year 1, we told the children that for the duration of the project, they were going to be game developers. At the end of the project they would have the chance to share their games with the year 5 children and also to try out the games from year 5.

The children started the project by evaluating different video games using the Cbeebies website. They were able to vocalise their thoughts quite clearly and it was easy to see that they were expanding their thinking. They then moved onto investigating 2DIY software, planning their own game, creating it and testing.  For the duration of the project they kept diaries of their findings, plans and evaluations. These were linked to literacy lessons for a period of two weeks and the children were given plenty of time to complete them.

In the six weeks, not many of the pairs of children managed to finish their games, but there were some interesting ideas and themes developing. There was also some great teamwork developing. Unfortunately we ran out of time to share the games with year 5, and this was disappointing but there was no possibility of extending the project.

As for whether it helped to promote writing, there was no discernible surge in interest in writing, but the project did lead to some very insightful comments from the children during class discussions, and it definitely made the children look more critically at games for which they are the audience. The vocabulary that the children started to use when evaluating games was varied, and for those reasons, the project was very worthwhile for the year 1 children.