Dolphin Island Delight

I was feeling very guilty … I was letting my Year 4’s down … I had planned a series of activities to “do” with the Year 4’s (ages 8-9) that tied in with the Dolphin Island game, but I hadn’t had time to do more than explain some of the ideas of what we could do.

 When I finally called them all together to get “started” I had no takers – they were all otherwise engaged!

 Four students were bunkered down on the pillows totally absorbed in playing the game. Someone called “TIME” and the games were passed on to the next player, the groupings moved around and the next lot of kids were soon quickly drawn into the game as well.

 A little group were huddled around the DOCs (Dear Old Computers or Dead, Old Computers depending on the current state of operability!) reading and typing from their writing notebooks information about dolphins onto the class wiki.

 One little person was flicking through non-fiction texts looking for creatures that were in the game. Winson was looking up more facts about orcas on the internet – and pushing his and my current knowledge about the relationship between dolphins and orcas.

 I didn’t want to interrupt so left them till later.

 However…… later on ….

  •  some Year 4’s were looking for images of sea creatures from the game on Flikr to use in an art design project,
  • others were involved in the design work,
  • another pair were playing the game,
  • Deon was writing out his narrative that would accompany the Voki he was going to make about orcas,
  • Justin was searching through Flikr creative commons to find new pictures that he could legally use to illustrate the information reports he had written for the wiki about a number of marine animals.

 I’m afraid that my Year 4’s are just too busy

  • Organising
  • Directing
  • Negotiating
  • Sharing
  • Supporting
  • Investigating
  • Hypothesising
  • Researching
  • Contributing
  • Planning
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Experimenting, and
  • LEARNING

to “do” my activities.

 Isn’t it great 🙂

 

 

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