Get in Training for the Mario Olympics on the Wii

Creating rich learning tasks via resources that are engaging, challenging and involving can provide teachers with the contexts and openings to explore and enrich the learner experience.

For a P6 class at a school in Dundee, the provision of a stimulating and motivational context did just this.

Games-based learning has been proven to provide children with a fun and meaningful learning experience which draws on something they are both interested in, and good at.‘Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games’ on the Nintendo Wii was the contextual underpinning for a cross-curricular project which developed creativity. 

Delivering all four capacities of the Curriculum for Excellence, the project particularly impacted on the quality of storywriting produced by a class of somewhat reluctant and uninspired writers.

The presentation will discuss how the project was managed, the impact that it had on the pupil’s motivation and how parents were involved in the learning process.