Putting Our Ideas on Paper May 13, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , add a commentToday each group worked with me to discuss how they can turn their game quest into a story, and we looked at two different types of planners.
My suggestion is that everyone will write the story of their world and the events that lead up to the start of the player’s quest. Both planners help organise ideas for the opening, the development/turning point, and the ending/cliff-hanger.
- What sort of world was it? How did people live? Who ruled the land? Who are the important characters?
- What changed? What was lost/stolen? Who was overthrown? How did the evil characters arrive? Who now has power? How did life change?
- What must be done to make things better? Who needs to help? What sort of journey might be involved? Who will go?
Working with each of the groups I found that the best place to start was the turning point, or reason for the quest, and then to work backwards to think about how life was before then.
I have already seen some completed planners and they clearly show what detailed and interesting ideas everyone is coming up with. It is so exciting!
These stories are going to be something to be proud of and I can’t wait to get them podcasted and on here for everyone to enjoy! 
Making a Good First Impression May 12, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 1 comment so farAs we are going to be telling and writing stories set in our game world, we started looking at good ideas for fantasy stories today.
We looked at some opening lines and decided that some had too many ‘real’ names like “Aunty May” or “Sally”, and too many ‘real’ objects such as alarm clocks and…. worst of all… the word ’school’! Better examples started with “Long, long ago…” or “Once upon a time…” However, some said that these were too much like fairy tales and not grown up enough.
We then had a go at listing some good starters for fantasy stories of our own. Here are just a handful of the great examples that people came up with:
-”Once there lived…”, “There was once a land of gold…”, “In a land far away…” “In a castle long ago…” all by Lawrie
-”Curled up in a small ball was a measly wizard no bigger than you or me…” by Laura
-”The mist swirled around the dark tower…”, “Deep underground in a place not known to man, pixies, ogres, wizards, witches and other creatures crept mysteriously around…” by Morgan
-”Sailing in the icy, treacherous, misty sea of Suptle Doom…” by Jamie
-”Before time began…”, “In another world…” by Katherine
-”In the dead of night a cloaked figure ran into the village…”, “At the crack of dawn the Prince ran from the castle…” by Carolyn
A Quiet Week in the World Builder Project May 9, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work, Games-Based Learning Links , 1 comment so farAs we were only in Wednesday - Friday and have so many other exciting things like PE, and Art glass design project and Music, we didn’t have nearly enough time for World Building!
However, on Wednesday afternoon each group had 25 minutes to work on their terrain and conversations. Some have forgotten how to go about writing conditions, so we will go over that again together on Monday next week. The tricky part is that you have to start at the end, so you need to plan your dialogue first.
Also on Wednesday we continued reading and completing Literature Circle activities on our Fantasy novels. I’d love to see some mini-reviews on here soon.
For those who had read up to their target chapter and finished their activity, there was also a little time to start work on our props for the game/world presentation. There are some really great ideas for special objects and the designs are looking good. A large pile of cardboard, fabric and tubes is gathering in preparation for making our props for real.
This week’s World Builder Brain Booster May 9, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 31commentsGood morning! Is it really Friday again already?
When we did this last week it produced such great ideas and was so much fun we just had to do it again! The IT people are doing some work today so if the server goes down we’ll have to add to it over the weekend and on Monday!
This week’s brain booster question is….
IF A WIZARD GRANTED YOU THE POWER TO CAST ONLY ONE SPELL, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
All visitors are welcome to join in!
Project Journals May 3, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 2commentsSince we started the project everyone has been creating a Project Journal. Here are some pages from Rory’s:
They started as a cover and some very useful trouble-shooting handouts from the Adventure Author team, and have grown as we have added language work, character mind-maps, storyline ideas and some, like Rory, have also added their very own alphabet! We are keeping them all in a special tray but if any parents would like to see one please let me know and I’ll send it home.
A World Builder Brain Booster! May 2, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 34commentsGood morning! Today’s Brain Booster is electronic! Please add your comment as your answer to today’s question:
If you were not a human, which race of beings (including talking/magical animals) would you be, and why?
Visitors to the site are welcome to join in too!
Setting the Scene May 1, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 11commentsToday groups 1 and 3 worked with me on the importance of scenes, environments and settings.
We came up with a good list of criteria for what a good game setting should have: Lots of interesting things so the player is entertained, but not too many things or unnecessary things because the player might get confused or lose interest.
As with our dialogue work on Tuesday we then talked about how we can apply these ideas to story writing. It was said that we need to entertain and not to confuse with too much information. We also agreed that because, unlike in a game where the player can see the terrain that you have created as your world, a reader cannot know what that world is like unless you describe it to them. This involves amazing adjectives and astounding adverbs!
Our main activity was to rewrite basic sentences using more exciting and entertaining language and adding adjectives, adverbs, and more information.
I’d really like everyone to add their improved descriptions here as comments as they were really impressive!
What gets us talking? May 1, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work , 1 comment so farOn Tuesday we got together to look at conversations we had written and discuss how the dialogue in our game does more than allow your player to talk to random animals!
We started by brainstorming the different reasons why people talk to each other. We came up with lots of reasons including gossiping, telling jokes, interrogating people, teaching and learning (I didn’t suggest that one, honest!) and asking for things on a menu. We then put these into categories:
Communicating a need, communicating information, requesting information, and pure entertainment. (I think gossiping covers most of these!)
So we need to think about what the conversations in the game were doing. We looked at Morgan’s game as one of the good examples that people have created. The conversation between Larry the horse and the player communicates not only the need for help, but also information about who the villain is, and what role the player character has in it all.
We tried building a new conversation together, which spawned lots of great plot ideas about magical or dead bears! We might try that again later!
What we finished by discussing was how this was similar to conversation writing in normal story writing: you always have to think about what you are doing with a conversation and how it moves the story forward for the reader.
The World Builder Display May 1, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work, Images , 1 comment so far
The display inside our classroom is beginning to reflect the huge amount of work that we have done so far on our World Builder project. All our collage Land of Fairy Tale characters are up there, as well as the images from famous fantasy stories such as “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Lord of The Rings” that we used to develop our own characters. There is a Middle Earth section, with maps from “LOTR” and “The Hobbit”, I have one completed Elf Name picture by Morgan up too. More please!
Our Worlds & Quests Are Beginning To Take Shape.. April 30, 2008
Posted by Miss Collins in : Class work, Images , add a comment
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.
