Female: Initially we started thinking about, well, the world of rock and roll, characters in a band, and we began by writing biographies. So I was using the skills of biographic writing but in an imaginative context. So we do everyone formatively, everything is Assessment Is For Learning, so we did our success criteria, we looked at models of good practice, and the children were then allowed to write a biography of an imaginary band member. At that stage I introduced the game into the classroom.
Child: Well, all we really had to do was a plan and we just had to like ... (unclear) ... lots of notes and like we were really trying to focus on like what got them motivated, like what made them do something. Because like some people like weren’t, like when their character was young they weren’t interested and then something happened.
Child: Like mine [laughs].
Yeah. Sometimes others they were just brought up used to music, so it was really like saying why they did, why they did it. And then like just explaining what is going on in their life.
Child: It was in a writing box, but it was like the box had been opened because we were practising two different types. Because there was the imaginative factor, because obviously they’re not real people, and then there’s the functional factor because it’s about biographies and that. It was really, really good fun because normally I really don’t like being in bands, but I really enjoyed this plan because it wasn’t actually about something in real life, I could just let go and just make up Lavender.
Child: It was, it was something really different, because like when … on the plan sheet it was like it gave you examples and it was on Gandhi, and it really made you think, well if we had to write on Gandhi …
Child: It’s so boring.
Child: Yeah, it would be like a bit boring because like in this you’ve got to imagine it and you were practising writing as well. So it was like getting two things instead of just one.
Find us on