In small groups Year 8 students had created fun and engaging games for the Year 2s to try out. Collaborative projects such as the Scratch Workshop give learning a real life context and a practical aim.
Students were asked to design ‘an educational game for Year 2 students’. Within that they were given some possible topics – Christmas, sequencing instructions, literacy or numeracy, media magic, transport. Some combined these ideas and they also had to figure out the right level of challenge to pitch to our six and seven year olds! For the Year Two children, it was an opportunity to give the Year 8 students real, blunt, end user feedback and to be able to talk about what they thought made sense and what worked well, as well as identifying areas which needed improvement. The Year 2 children stood next to their favourite design at the end!
This project has been running for several years and we’re at the point where almost all Year 8 students who were at BIS HCMC in Year 2 remember their visit. It is brilliant that an hour of their life when they were 6 or 7 years old has stayed with them until now – another valuable learning experience.
Ms Fran O’Donnell, Year 2 Class Teacher