Jumping Back In

The new school year is here and with it a new take on our gaming club. We are about to jump back in, after taking a year off, with our World of Warcraft  extra curricular club, which will run throughout  most of the school year.

Some things have changed however. This year the work won't revolve exclusively around a novel. That doesn't mean books won't be involved. It just means that we will open the club up a bit more to a greater range of language based activities.

Students who decide to participate in the club will have a chance not only to play World of Warcraft, but to engage in several other online gaming experiences including Minecraft. The lessons will involve game play time and a range of language based activities. Students will share their work and reflections on our ABC WoW Blog.

It should be an exciting year full of online gaming and language learning at the ABC. We look forward to sharing more with you as the school year progresses.

Teaching ReadingThrough Gaming and Teamwork .

The inspiration for this project came from WoW in School

Resources:

• Graphic Novel Study:The Arctic Incident. Adapted by Eoin Colfer Andrew Donkin (Artemis Fowl Graphic Novel) (10 copies)
• WoW Trial version
• parent permission slips and student accounts
• ABC WoW Blog for responding

Maximum Number of Students: 9

Purpose

The purpose of this unit is to engage students in reading and response activities, which encourage them to draw parallels between online gaming activities, involving teamwork in a virtual world. Through quests, students will interact with other players, reflect on their experiences in written form as well as through discussion and draw parallels between their quests and the readings.
Each of the lessons will include a blog post which will reflect on readings and the gaming experiences students have had.

Overview

• The project will take place over a 20 week period as an extra curricular activity for middle school students (to include reluctant readers and/or writers), utilising a, gaming and learning environment combined with reading and response.
• The project will include the use of the online video game and virtual world, World of Warcraft, as well as the graphic novel The Arctic Incident. Adapted by Eoin Colfer Andrew Donkin (Artemis Fowl Graphic Novel) and a blogger.com blog set up for this purpose.
• The following themes will be addressed as key components of the project: reading and responding, teamwork through gaming and social interaction.  The ISTE Nets addressed through the project are 1,2,4 and 5.

Procedure

Over a 20 week period, students will engage in weekly quests, discussion and reflection in the Learning Resources Centre, during extra curricular time. Parallels will be drawn, in reflective blog posts, between student experiences in-world and the experiences of the characters in the novel. Readings and/or blog responses will be assigned as homework each week.