Minecraft, Writing and Boys (or How the Ender Dragon can save us all)

Our school (like many other no doubt) has a issue with Boys and Writing. The new entrants who walk into our gates have less than a 50% chance of meeting standard by the time they leave us for Intermediate. This isn't good enough, we know it, and currently we are working at addressing this area of need.

One of my inquiries last year was looking at the effect of Minecraft as a context for writing. I knew nothing of the game, other than the boys would babble in a strange language at the mere mention of it...words like nether portal, obsidian, pickaxe, zombie, and endermen...it made no sense. Many educators, much more talented than I, have been down this path with great success...so it is no surprise that the boys a) enjoyed writing about minecraft, and b) they used language that they never would or could in the kinds of writing they were doing previously.

12 months later, and a brief but awesome foray into writing about the zombie apocalype (also very engaging and full of greta vocab), I am back working with a group of lads writing about Minecraft. It is different now. no longer do we play the game, or build things in a world...we are using the world as a place for something to happen, for a narrative to play out. Mr Cubey has made an excellent series of videos called 'Life of a...' farmer/hunter/spartan/wizard/pirate...they have one central character, and a struggle they are dealing with. The worlds the narrative is played within are absolutely amazing, even showing 10 seconds is enough to generate massive discussion within the group.

The 29 boys and I will watch a section of the video repeatedly...using Padlet to record ideas, vocab, phrases, and ways they could structure their work. They then go about crafting a paragraph or two based on what we have watched, using the rich discussions recorded on the Padlet. I call down groups to work with me, using their current writing as the vehicle to develop and show their current learning intention (eg, using the speech from the video,cam we write and punctuate it correctly to add some impact?).

We have just completed a piece based on Life of a Builder...here is an example (largely unsupported). It's not perfect, but has some great elements to be worked on.

The current piece we are working on is Minecraft The Beginning...the video is a narrative showing a player play the game, developing from a shipwrecked man with nothing, to creating an amazing world and battling many foes. It has a twist ending also...not the best, but a good talking point. The boys use this group padlet to record their ideas, and use this to plan their writing each day. The boys are producing some magic stuff, and the language is amazing. At one stage in another video a character became 'dizzy' when put under a spell. The film described it as dizzy, but one of my lads said 'he is feeling nauseous'...wow!

I've now got disengaged writers who are writing their own narrative-type 'chapter-books' in their spare time...Wasteland of the Dead is a favourite...spelling? Punctuation? Grammar? Not so much, but enthusiasm and engagement? Yep, in spades!

Letting Boys write in a context they love helps, letting them work collaboratively helps, rich discussion about language helps, mixed-ability helps, and the fact the Minecraft has a rich language to it means yes, the Ender Dragon really can help save our boys writing.