Samorost 2 part 2
‘Bod was sad’.
This is the sentence that was first suggested by our primary class in response to the question ‘how does Bod feel?’ Bod, incidentally, is the name the class has decided to give our electronic hero in the game Samorost 2. After much discussion and refinement the class arrived at this final sentence:
‘Bod felt scared and alone in the dark, damp underground place’.
Now this might not seem like a very impressive result, especially when the class has a mixture of KS2 year groups. In context, however, this is very exciting.
All of the children our primary class have moderate or severe learning difficulties and all but one has emotional and behavioural problems. Two are autistic and there are a multitude of other potential barriers to learning. This means that they often struggle to remain engaged. The first part of our Samorost 2 journey took 45 minutes, and the children remained highly motivated throughout. Even the staff were scribbling down the web address in order to continue the adventure at home.
The language used was excellent, thinking of loads of different ways to say he was scared, such as frightened and anxious. The children also listened well to each other. Add into the mix that the children have limited vocabularies, this way of learning has great potential.
The hope is that each week the children will blog their sentences accompanied by the related screenshot.
