Video games have the ability to engage pupils like no other medium and that is why I was delighted when as part of our work on Kensuke's Kingdom, the adventure novel by Michael Morpurgo, I was able to persuade my colleagues to use the PlayStation VR to use the game Perfect to immerse them in detailed rendered representation of a tropical beach. We used the PSVR and connected it onto a projector and sound system. I was controlling the VR headset as it is not recommended for anyone under the age of 12. I held the VR headset in my hand and controlled it in this way so I could still speak to the pupils. I recorded the gameplay using the recording option and uploaded it onto YouTube.com so the children could refer to it whilst they were writing their piece.
The children all had whiteboards and pens and wrote adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and figurative language on their boards and then they wrote their first paragraph in their books using the notes they had made. The sequence of work is still continuing but currently this is what we have produced. I have included our working wall as this will be added to over the coming week.
