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Phew! My first week back at school has been extremely busy, with an e-safety conference, lots of meetings, a lesson observation, and the start of something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time… using Myst to support our Literacy work!

I know that many other teachers have used Myst before, so this is not a new idea to many other schools. However, for me, it’s a completely new way of inspiring children with their Literacy work, and I have been extremely pleased and impressed with the results so far.

The Internet has lots of forum messages, blog posts and mentions of research which explore the use of Myst in schools, but I couldn’t find many plans which which might help me with starting point for ideas. The only plan I could find was kindly emailed to me by ’soapboxgirl’ on the TES forums. Having looked through the information available, I decided to spend half term last week playing the entire game (using a fantastic walkthrough to save time), and then begin creating a three week plan which aimed to meet the needs of the children in my class, whilst making the most of the wonderful characters, settings and puzzles within the game.

There are many ways that the game could be used within schools, so other teachers may use the game to achieve different objectives. However, I’ve outlined and reflected on our activities below, as it may provide a useful starting point for others, or simply give some ideas.

In terms of practical arrangements, we only had one copy of Myst, so we played together as a class. The classroom lights were turned off, the blinds were drawn and we turned our classroom into a cinema for the ‘gaming’ aspects of our lessons. This really helped to build up a fantastic atmosphere within the classroom. I sat amongst the children with a wireless mouse asking questions (what might be behind that door? how could we describe this landscape?) and guiding their thoughts and ideas. The children really became absorbed in our progress, and it was wonderful to be able to work through the puzzles together. I had already played the game before, but it certainly felt like I was playing the game for the first time again, as we explored in the classroom.

Day 1 – As an initial introduction (on a day when I was actually out of class at a conference), the children discussed types of computer / video games that they play outside of school, and identified / described the characters and settings that can be found within these. The children also looked at a number of (carefully chosen) characters and locations from Super Smash Bros, which were used as a stimulus for ideas. They then created a special vocabulary book for use within our ‘Myst’ topic, and these have been a fantastic resource for our work later in the week.

Day 2 – We watched the introduction video to Myst III, with the audio on mute. This allowed the children to focus on what they could see in the film, and try to build up a picture of who the main character was. They had some fantastic ideas and were intrigued by some of the items on Atrus’ desk (particularly the large pink crystal). They also spotted the photos of other people, and tried to work out who they might be. We then watched the video again with the sound turned on, and used this additional information to build up our understanding of what the game might be about. The children then produced some mind maps which showed what they already knew from the videos, as well as their predictions about Atrus, his family and the storyline of the game.

Day 3 – After watching the introduction movie again to refresh our memories, we began exploring the rich environments within the game. We looked out over the desert and mountains in Tomahna, and the children recorded words / phrases / sentences in their vocabulary books. 

They were really keen to record as much new descriptive vocabulary in their books as possible, and I was impressed at the wonderful expressions that they came up with. We then turned a little to see the lush greenery within the Atrium, a complete contrast to the scene that we had just described. The children noticed lots of small details which I had completely overlooked when I first played the game, and it was fascinating to see them trying to work out where we ‘were’ and what we had to do as we played the game. As we looked around the game, Catherine (Atrus’ wife) appeared and introduced herself to us. Some of the children thought she was friendly, but others were a little more suspicious and felt that they couldn’t trust her, as she was a little too nice.

As an independent activity, the class then wrote a descriptive paragraph about the desert / mountain scene, the atrium, or about Catherine. Again, they produced some really impressive writing, which showed how much they had observed from exploring the environment together, as well as some great Literacy skills. The children were desperate to go through the door and enter the study, but that would have to wait until tomorrow! 

Day 4 – In today’s lesson, we spent a considerable time looking around Atrus’ study, browsing through the books, the items on the shelf and the desk, looking at Atrus’ note and observing the tapestries on the wall. Again, the children were able to piece together lots of little pieces of information to develop their understanding of the background story. One skill that our children sometimes struggle with is ‘inference and deduction’ and the game really allowed children to practise that a great deal. They used all of the visual clues within each setting, information written within Atrus’ notes, and any audio information provided by the game (in the form of music changes and sound effects) to develop their ideas and make predictions. It was wonderful to see them all working together to build up their understanding of this shared journey.

The children then completed some Literacy activities linked to Atrus’ note, identifying particular vocabulary and types of words used within the letter. Some groups also thought of questions they might ask the characters if they had a chance, in order to further develop their empathy skills, and to help them find out more about the storyline within the game.

After sharing and celebrating the children’s work in the plenary, we finally looked at the Releeshahn book in the study, met Atrus, and then saw the sudden and dramatic arrival of Saavedro. This really captured the children’s attention and they were desperate to continue… however they had to go off to assembly!

Day 5 – After a swooping flight over J’nanin (where the children were swaying as if they were riding a roller coaster!), we spent time looking around the island (following Saavedro up to the top of the observatory, discussing how it felt to be standing on the beach, winding our way down the staircase to the lake, meeting a small furry animal who the children fell in love with, and then looking at the strange objects at the bottom level of the observatory). The children then produced another descriptive paragraph, using similes and metaphors to describe the places they had visited.

Displays:

Throughout the week, we have also been building up a display in our classroom, adding new characters and locations as we discovered them in the game. Many of the children’s descriptions have also been added to this display, as a way of celebrating their work, and also with the intention of producing a collection of vocabulary which we can use in the coming weeks. As the weeks go by, this will grow with the addition of more locations and new words / phrases.

Our Myst wiki:

We’ve also tried using a wiki to record some of this vocabulary. This is the first time that I’ve used a wiki within the classroom, and things went quite smoothly. You can see some of the children’s work at our Year 5 Myst wiki. The benefit of using a wiki is that the children could add their own descriptions, and then help improve each other’s work online afterwards. We also looked at their work using the interactive whiteboard and suggested improvements, which were then added simply by editing the pages online. I don’t think that the wiki currently shows the best of the children’s Literacy work, because of their slow typing speed, and the limited amount of time that we had to work on this. 

Other cross-curricular ideas:

The game also has lots of cross-curricular potential. We have tried creating some new ‘Myst-style’ landscape pictures, which could be used in a future project (see below). I also bought the Myst soundtrack on eBay, and I could certainly imagine using this for a music project (although I don’t think that I’ll have time for this right now).

Final reflections:

Our Literacy lessons this week have certainly been a new, exciting and thoroughly enjoyable learning experience for all involved. The children have become incredibly engrossed in the game, and our explorations of the island are something that they all look forward to. I have lost count of the number of times the children have asked “Are we playing Myst today?”. They have also been asking where they can buy a copy of the game themselves, so they can play at home!

The results of the Literacy work have also been impressive, with some wonderful descriptions and incredible vocabulary used. Every child has ‘wowed’ me with something this week, whether that be the inclusion of a particularly inspired simile, the use of a highly effective word or phrase to describe something, or the mention of the smallest details from the game which only they noticed as we played.

In the coming weeks, I’m hoping to build on our success so far, exploring new locations within the game, developing other aspects of Literacy, as well as adding new material to our class display and wiki. Ultimately, I would really like the children to be able to make their own ‘mini-Myst’ style adventure game, combining their Literacy and Art work to create something which allows the player to make choices, which then affect the outcome of their adventure. This may be far beyond what we can achieve within the next few weeks (especially with Christmas rapidly approaching), but it’s definitely something I’d like to aim for!

It’s time to stop blogging, and start planning for Week Two!