Conquer Your Quest

What is our need?

 

Utilizing the free online program, Classcraft, we are planning to design crime scene investigation quests to aid 4th grade students in learning about inferencing. We decided to focus our lesson on the topic of inferencing due to finding a need for further review in this particular area. “In fact, many teachers identify inferencing as one of the most challenging of all academic skills to teach, because they note that inference feels abstract and difficult to model, design lessons around, and assess” (Silver, Dewing, Perini, 2013). Rachel has noticed a similar finding in her own classroom. In Rachel’s classroom, it is difficult for many students, especially ESL students to understand what is “hidden beneath the story lines.” Often times, students will restate word-for-word what is happening in a story, rather than digging deeper and connecting ideas from the text to infer what is occurring. Creating a game that teaches and reviews this skill would help students understand how to inference in a more meaningful and hands-on way.    

 

Why Classcraft?

 

Classcraft was our gaming software of choice for many reasons which include:

• It’s free: When creating a game designed lesson for teachers to use, we wanted to make sure it didn’t require the purchase of expensive programs. Unfortunately, incorporating modern technology into the classroom can often be quite costly, deterring teachers from wanting to implement it. That’s why Classcraft is a great choice!

• It’s user friendly: Many teachers do not have a background in computer science or technology, so they shouldn’t be expected to know how to code or generate a videogame from scratch. Thankfully, Classcraft can make anyone look like a gaming guru, no matter what level of familiarity they have with technology.

• It’s your own: You can create your own interactive quests, which are interactive quizzes, for any grade level or subject, because Classcraft is completely customizable.

   

  What will our game look like? 

 

Although both teaching and learning inferencing skills can pose its difficulties, this is a very crucial skill for students to learn. Not only will students utilize inferencing in every grade level, but it is also a tool used daily in everyday life. Due to this, we decided to steer away from traditional lessons that require simply reading passages from a book and answering questions on a worksheet, and instead will develop an interactive game that brings inferencing to life. Our game will consist of several quests that will need to be mastered in order to successfully complete the inferencing unit. Each quest will contain crime scene pictures or videos that will be viewed by the student, along with questions asking him or her to draw inferences from what they viewed. We have included images below to show ideas of what our game might look like.