Vocabulary Detective

In this game, you will play as a detective to match the right graphics with the right words, to finish the word spellings, and to compose your sentences with the given words. The sentence you finally finished composing contains the clues of the hidden place of the thief, based on that, you will find the thief as a successive detective.

Learning objective: Grade 2nd students will be able to compose a simple English sentence by using the given words. 

Supporting objectives:

1. After playing the game, the players will be able to match the right graphics with the relative English words. 
2. After playing the game, the players will be able to correctly spell the given English words. 

Instructions on how to play the prototype:

This is a “Sokoban style” (pushing box) game. 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. After playing, the player will learn or review the English words and remember their meanings. Second game level, the player will push the missing letter(s) 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 game level, based on understanding the meanings of the words and their spellings, the player will push the words to the right place(s) to finish an English sentence. The finished English sentence will tell the clues of the hidden place of the thief. The players will find the thief with understanding the meaning of the English sentence. Finally, the thief will be caught by the vocabulary detective with the help of police men and teachers. 

Theory behind the 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).

References:

Calhoun, E. F. (1999). Teaching Beginning Reading and Writing With the Picture Word Inductive Model. Assn for Supervision & Curriculum.

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/