New on GameUp: After the Storm Literacy Game
Posted by SM Bruner on
Today we’re welcoming Patty Grossman from Classroom, Inc. to the blog. Patty is going to share more about a brand new literacy game her team developed called After the Storm. Thank you, Patty!
How do you keep grade-level readers engaged and challenged by their encounters with text? And how, in the same middle-school classroom, do you motivate readers who have been frustrated by years of struggling to make meaning of what they read?
In making the literacy game After the Storm, Classroom, Inc. melded traditional and cutting-edge solutions to help increase adolescent literacy while also meeting the needs of teachers who are both accountable to standards and eager to guide their students on a path to becoming thoughtful, lifelong readers.
At the root of so many successful solutions to making children want to read is a story they find engrossing and relatable. After the Storm is set in Port Douglas, a city that has been struck by a massive hurricane. Students are hooked from the start, and more so because, as editor-in-chief of an online magazine, they are the hero of the story. They must solve myriad problems of how to keep their readers connected and accurately informed. The game is full of decision-points, and to make the best decisions students must carefully read, analyze, and form judgments about the informational texts they frequently encounter. Keeping those decisions rooted in the storyline and the high stakes of the post-hurricane setting is a key strategy we employ for motivating students.
After the Storm: Day One is a short, excerpted version of a full 20-hour game experience. In the full version, students’ performance in understanding each text determines if they are routed behind the scenes to other game levels, including two in which Super Ed—the game’s digital coach—provides instructional support. Meanwhile, the game delivers to a teacher dashboard valuable data on students’ performance on After the Storm’s target grade Common Core State Standards in reading informational text and writing informational and persuasive texts, for the 6th grade.
For 23 years, Classroom, Inc. has made adolescent literacy, especially among students in underserved communities, a central focus. We are thrilled to partner with BrainPOP, whose great success with students and teachers is proven through the hundreds of thousands who use their resources every day. Play After the Storm: Day One here!
