4/5/6 

Unit Focus: Game Designers at Work

This term, our Grade 4/5/6 students are taking on the role of game designers. Over eight weeks, they will design, build, test and share their own original game using MakeCode Arcade, a block-based (and JavaScript) coding platform. Students follow a structured design process, documented in their own project workbook. In it they research existing games, plan their features, record their testing and reflect on what they learn. Students have one hour of dedicated project time each week, and they are invited (but not required) to keep tinkering at home and work on their project booklet.

Week 1 Highlights

Our first week was all about exploring. Students dived into MakeCode Arcade, played a range of games, and recorded what they noticed in their workbooks. They reflected on elements of game design and user interface design, such as how a game shows the player what to do and how it responds to their actions.

Students also began unpacking the MakeCode skillmaps. These are short, guided tutorials, each showing how to build one thing that games do. They will become a handy toolkit for students to draw on when they start building. A few keen students have already begun brainstorming and loosely sketching their own game ideas.

Ask your child to show you their workbook and tell you about the ideas they may have bouncing around for their own game!

Alan from 5/6A - “It’s very interesting that we get to learn about new types of coding. I’m used to Scratch, so using MakeCode has been interesting. It means I can try to push the boundaries of my work.”

Amy from 5/6B - “The project is really interesting because you get to learn all the new tutorials and steps with the MakeCode program. I want to make a shark chase game where the shark gets to try and eat the goldfish in a set time limit. I might even try and make it two-player where one player is trying to eat the other!”

 

Louie from 5/6A - “I’m looking forward to how much time we get to spend on this, it’s going to make this project really good. Normally we only get a couple weeks for something like this in STEM, but we’re getting a whole term, so we’ll get to make a more interesting project.”