Last week I finally had the chance to use Endless Ocean on the Wiii with my Literacy set. For those of you who don't know Endless Ocean is a diving simulator where you go around looking at sea life and collecting objects. It is a very chilled out game and has a really nice sound track. It is really hard to buy though, but Endless Ocean 2 came out recently so that will provide a similar experience though isstill hard to find in your local shop.
The aim for my work was a precursor to a school trip to the London Aquarium. The first day we went diving and looked around the environment. About 6 children had a short go and the rest of the class where encouraged to make notes of what they saw. Then we looked at writing a description of the dive they just took. On the second day we had the task of creating our own sea creatures. We played the game again and this time focused on finding new creatures and reading the description that come up as you learn about the things around you. We read about 5 or 6 examples and discussed what information was included. Then the children where given images of various sea creatures and asked to cut them up to create their own creature and then write a description in the style of the game. The descriptions of the creatures where great, they where imaginative and really detailed a great success. I only wish I could have spent more time with the games and do more.
Look at the images below of the work they produced.
Check out the video below for some game play of Endless Ocean.