Vocabulary Detective Presentation
Video Transcript:
Hi everybody, I am Yupei. In this presentation, I am going to introduce my game Vocabulary Detective created by Construct 3 game Engine. This presentation is also the part 2 of my level 5 assignment in the course of Designing Games for Learning advised by Dr. Oprean.
In my presentation, you will see the following topics:
Game title: Vocabulary Detective
Overview of the game
- Game Goal: In this game, you will play the role of a detective to match the right graphics with the right words, complete word spellings, and compose sentences using given words. The sentence you ultimately compose will contain clues to the thief’s hiding place, based on clues, you will find the thief as a successful detective.
Describe the narrative: It’s a game blending realism and fantasy, set in an elementary school named “G school”.
Characters introduction:
The main character is a 2nd-grade student, who is a vocabulary detective. Besides the main character, there is a thief hiding somewhere in “G school”, along with a teacher and a police officer who are searching for the thief.
The thief presents a challenge in the game, designed to arouse players’ passion for playing and learning. The teacher and the police officer are Non-player characters who are also very important components of this educational game. In real life, it is not recommended for kids to confront criminals directly. The right way for them in this kind of situation is to report to school faculties or police officers. The protagonist in our game is a fictional character with special abilities to tell more information from English words and sentences. The game you are about to play is the first episode of this game series.
Game Background Introduction:
One day, a thief stole items from a primary school, some items were missing, and many items in the classroom and on the campus were made messy by the thief as well. Teachers and policemen are reorganizing the items and searching for the thief on the campus. The player will assume the role of a special detective – vocabulary detective, who can find the secret behind the letters, words and sentences. With the broad knowledge of vocabulary and strong intuition of language, can the detective find the clues of the thief?
Learning objective: 2nd Grade students will be able to compose a simple English sentence by using the given words.
Core Loop (How to play)
During the game playing, the player will experience three game levels. Firstly, to push the graphics to the relative English words, once a graphic matches to the correct word, the player gets the reward points. In this level, the player will learn or review the English words and remember their meanings. Second game level, the player will push the missing letters to finish the word spellings they have seen in the first level. In this level, the players will get more chances to be familiar with the words. Third level, based on understanding the meanings of the words and their spellings, the player will push the words to the right places to finish an English sentence. The finished English sentence will tell the clues of the thief’s hidden place. The players will find the thief by correctly understanding the meaning of the English sentence. Finally, the thief will be caught by the policemen with the help of the vocabulary detective and teachers.
Keep an eye on the time while you are playing. You need to finish each level in 99 seconds. Do not waste too much valuable time, or you might let the thief escape.
This is a “Sokoban style” game, meaning you can use the four arrow buttons to move the vocabulary detective around in the game.
Now, let me show you quickly about the real game setting. You can go to the game website to start the game. Once you launch the game, you will read the brief instructions of how to play, which will also remind the players of the game goals. Read the instruction, then go to play level 1. The game scenarios are quite straightforward where you can explore and do some trials and errors as you wish.
When you have an idea about how to match the graphics, control the vocabulary detective to push the graphics to match the relative words. Each correct match will earn you 10 points, while each incorrect match will deduct 10 points from your total. Additionally, if you make a wrong match, you will have to replay the level from the beginning. After finishing all the matches, you can use the exit to go to the next level.
The same rules are used in the different levels, but the challenges are becoming harder and harder. For level 2, you need to finish the word spelling with the right missing letters. Based on your memory about the words in level 1, you can tackle the problems in level 2. Now, you not only remember the meaning of the words, but will also be familiar with spellings. Then, let’s go to level 3.
In level 3, there is a half-finished sentence. You can check the sentence and the given words which you can use to finish the sentence. Pay attention to both grammar and logic to construct a meaningful English sentence. After finishing the sentence, you can read through it to find the clues of the thief’s hidden place. For example, the sentence might be, “The thief put a pencil and an eraser into his bag to hide behind the biggest tree.” Now, you may notice there are some trees in the level 3 game scenario. You need to tell which tree is the biggest one? Try to find the thief behind the biggest tree. Once you reach the location of the biggest tree, the thief will be caught by the policemen, and you will get an extra 50 points as reward.
Congratulations, you win, vocabulary detective.
What makes it a learning game?
The Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) was developed by Emily Calhoun. It has been defined as “An inquiry-oriented language arts strategy that uses pictures containing familiar objects and actions to elicit words from children’s listening and speaking vocabularies.” This model helps develop primary or early-stage readers’ vocabulary, reading and writing skills, through building on what they already know.
Engage students in shaking words out of a picture—words from their speaking vocabularies—to begin the process of building their reading and writing skills. Use the picture word inductive model (PWIM) to teach several skills simultaneously, beginning with the mechanics of forming letters to hearing and identifying the phonetic components of language, to classifying words and sentences, through forming paragraphs and stories based on observation(Calhoun, 1999).
Declarative knowledge and rules-based knowledge(Kapp, 2012) are the learning domains of my game.
Declarative knowledge
- Matching: match the word to the picture which shows its meaning.
- Repetition: to find the right letters to finish the given word spelling.
Rules-based knowledge
- Experience Consequences: Compose the correct English sentence with the given words.
The purpose of keeping the players engaged is to report the missing items in the school to teachers and help the police catch the thief. The climax of the story involves using the right words to compose a correct sentence, based on an understanding of the words’ meaning and usages. The sentence is the clue to the thief’s hiding place. If the player understands the sentence correctly, he or she will help police find the thief more easily. The rising actions involve becoming familiar with the meanings of the words in the first and second levels. The game is designed to foster students’ interest in learning English vocabulary. The more vocabulary the players have, the higher scores they can get in the game.
Core Dynamic
Race to the finish, and Matching.
Scoring, Reward, Assessment
Scoring: The initial score is 100 points. Each correct matching will add 10 points. Meanwhile, each wrong matching will reduce 10 points.
Reward: If the players follow the clues to find the thief successfully, an extra 50 will be added to the sum points.
Assessment : The game system will evaluate the players on their accuracy of the vocabulary knowledge when they play the game. The higher the score they get, the better understanding about the vocabulary they have.
James Paul Gee is a leader in the research of game-based learning. He wrote a paper called Good Video Games and Good learning which outlines 16 principles critical to strong Game based learning. My game mainly focuses on two of the principles.
- Identity – with clear goals and clear roles, games invite players to take on different roles and invite the players to become different people and try new activities(Why Game Based Learning Will Make Your Child Smarter?, 2020).
In my game, I want to invite a player to take the role of a sort of superhero to help the police officer and school faculty to find the thief. Let them experience “Knowledge is powerful”.
- Empowered Learners – learners must feel like what they do matters(Why Game Based Learning Will Make Your Child Smarter?, 2020). I hope the players can really use daily learning in their classrooms to resolve problems. This game embedded the common vocabulary a 2nd grader should master. Beyond asking the primary students to practice the words by reading or writing, the game provides another possibility to be familiar with them.
Thanks for all the tutorials makers and resources providers. Thanks to the peer reviews from my fellow classmates. Thanks to Dr. Oprean’s help and guidance.
References
Why Game Based Learning Will Make Your Child Smarter? – EdTechReview. (2020, July 23). https://www.edtechreview.in/trends-insights/trends/why-game-based-learning-will-make-your-child-smarter/
Tutorial
Sound and background music :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6y0lTeOURE
Countdown timer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BRbEJP7e8
Assets:
Audio:https://www.kenney.nl/assets/category:Audio?sort=update https://www.kenney.nl/assets/impact-sounds Background music:https://freesound.org/