Our Worlds & Quests Are Beginning To Take Shape.. April 30, 2008
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Our groups met to share storyline ideas: characters, villains, settings, world names, helpers and, most importantly, quests. This was really useful to help everyone summarise and focus their ideas, and also helped those who were still finding it tricky. The great thing about this was also that it shows just how different everyone’s stories are, even though we are all using the same software with the same tools.
Are you a Took or a Knotwise of Witfurrows?! April 25, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 5commentsWednesday we learnt the Dwarfish Runic Alphabet, as designed by J.R.R Tolkien for “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings”. But rather than write our normal names using runes, we found out what our elf and hobbit names were using a wonderful website:
http://chriswetherell.com/hobbit/ and http://chriswetherell.com/elf/
There were some real crackers!
I am Polly Peatfingers of Brockenborings, and Mrs Borthwick is Ruby Proudfoot 
A Journey to Middle Earth April 25, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Uncategorized , add a commentOur new class novel is the wonderful book “The Hobbit” by probably the most famous fantasy writer of all time, J.R.R Tolkien.
We have been finding out about how hobbits like cake, dwarves like gold, elves like singing and trolls love a good argument… but not after sunrise!
We have talked a lot about “The Lord of the Rings” during the project as many of us have seen the films, and “The Hobbit” is the story of how Bilbo came to have the ring in the first place.
Targets for Next Week April 25, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Uncategorized , 2commentsStar Qualities Shine On April 25, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work, Games-Based Learning Links , 5comments
The Adventure Author team have been full of praise for how well each group listens, help each other, and use questions and suggestions to learn and develop their ideas.
I can really see this coming through in other parts of project work and normal class work too!
What a class! :) Well Done everyone!
Choices, choices, choices…. and conditions! April 24, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Games-Based Learning Links , 3commentsThe Adventure Author team worked with each group today on developing their conversations. They showed us how to make the creatures perform different actions as consequence of the choices that the player makes. For example, your creature might become an ally and follow you around, or they might decide they don’t like you very much and attack you!
Later we were also shown how these choices can be developed further into conditions. For example, you may need to bring a creature a certain item or items for them to be willing to help you. This can also be a way for the character to earn money or gain other objects that will be useful or vital later in the game.
This is an extremely useful tool in developing the plot, or quest, within the game and we will be looking at this and practicing how to set it up next week.
What do Harry, Artemis, Will and Aslan have in common? April 24, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , add a commentP7b are reading about all of them!
Today everyone got stuck in to the new Literature Circle books, all of which are fantasy genre. Titles we are reading include: “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, “The Subtle Knife”, “Stone Heart”, “Artemis Fowl”, and various books within the “Chronicles of Narnia” series.
I was really pleased to see everyone giving these books a go, even if fantasy wasn’t a genre they would normally have gone for. Well done everyone for having such a positive attitude!
Show not tell April 22, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , add a commentToday we did a little bit of work on how we can show a reader or listener what a character is like through giving them evidence without using the main adjective.
We made character mind maps starting with adjectives that apply to them, and then linking phrases that would show they are that adjective. For example, rather than saying Gandalf was magical, we could show this by saying ‘he had a mystical aura’ (Well done Chloe & Morgan for that one!).
This was more tricky than the adjective work we did last week, but I was really pleased that nearly everyone gave it their best shot and has started thinking about this important skill.
Fridge Magnets April 17, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Games-Based Learning Links , 21commentsBy the end of today, Groups 2 &3 had also learnt about a great tool called fridge magnets.
I’m going to leave it to them to explain how this works tomorrow!
What would Gandalf do? April 17, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 5commentsToday Groups 1 & 3 worked with me on character personalities and motivations.
We started by looking at images from Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Spiderwick Chronicles. We talked about the different appearances and races, and about which characters were good or evil.
In groups we then completed phrase cards about a favorite character. For example, Scott started with “My character is so evil that….” and he completed it with “they pillage villages for fun!” Some other great lines were “My character is so beautiful that when anyone sees her they are mesmerized”, and “My character is so brave that he would kill an orc”. I’d love to see some more I didn’t get to hear added as comments folks!
We then took in in turns to take on the role of our chosen character, and answer questions from the others as the character would. Through this we found out that Gandalf’s favorite colour is blue, and the thing that orcs want most in life…. is meat!
We learned through this that evil characters as well as good characters have quests and motives and we need to consider their personalities and thinking when writing dialogue in our games and in stories.
Everyone worked really well today!
