Teaching with videogames: media literacy & 'Untitled Goose Game'
In this 8 lesson sequence, students explore characters as a central part of a storytelling and think about why audiences have so much fun playing as a mischievous anti-hero.
They then look at the impact of shifting point of view in a story to focus on the perspectives of the humans, by forming news team creating a special news edition about the day the goose terrorised the town.
Through this project, students build skills in text adaptation from multimodal into written form. They explore conventions of text types in news journalism, such as factual recounts, interviews and opinion pieces, and how these different forms can change the way the same events are represented.
The larger project outlined in this lesson assumes some prior learning around news as well as experience with text types such as recounts and persuasive texts. A shorter, more focused session could can look at adapting the game events for a single text type, such as a factual news report.
Possibilities for extension activities include creating video news reports and students working on creating their own original characters.
Year level: 5-6
Learning areas: English & Media Arts
Suggested duration: 5 to 8 sessions. See a shorter option under 'Differentiation'
Download the full lesson plan
The lesson plan includes links to the Victorian and Australian Curricula, indications of lesson timing, and ideas for differentiation and assessment.
In this lesson, students will
| 1. In groups, produce a newspaper containing different article types responding to the news story of the horrible goose. |
| 2. Draft, edit and share a factual report, an interview, opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and optional other multimodal forms |
| 3. Consider character and point of view, and how this affects storytelling in the media |
By the end of this lesson, students will
| the characteristics of different text types that appear in a newspaper |
| how to develop a text based on a character |
| more about bias and perspective that affect reporting |
| produce different text types |
| adapt narrative elements from a videogame format into a written text outcome |
| understanding of the features and structures of different text types such as recounts and persuasive texts |
| planning and writing of different text types |