Let's ' Escape the Kitchen' !

What is gamification? In my own words, I suppose gamification should be a great combination of game design and learning involvement. The Gamification Wiki definitions it as "the infusion of game design techniques, game mechanics, and/or game style into anything. This definition is purposely broad to support the many uses of the word outside of the context of business". A few other definitions of gamification like incorporating game elements and mechanisms into non-gaming websites and software.

Using games for language learning can be a great adventure. First of all,  games can are always the best way to engage the learners. Rather than the traditional exercises, games can catch the learners' attention more effectively.  All of the players reward credit, the better you play, the more credits you are likely to win. Most of the cases, the credits and reward can motivate the players to boost their playing. However,teachers who choose to use games in the language learning classrooms should be careful of the design for the games. While a good design of the game can integrate learning and playing together, involving the teachers' teaching objectives into playing. An ineffective design might only worked as a way of classroom entertainment.

Escape the Kitchen is my favorite type of escape the room games, it is pretty interesting and involving. I've played for at least four times,  when  I played the first time, I had no idea what should I do, then I watched the walk through for the game, everything was definitely easy for me then. While I choose this game into my future class, the objective of this game is that: the students will able to learn 23 kitchen vocabulary. They are: kettle, cupboard,mixer, beater, radio, dial, batteries, fridge , freezer, power cord, bowl, parrot, feather, tickle, dog collar, sink, fill up, switch on, plug in, pour, knife, hammer and drill. During this game, students will work in pairs. One of them will watch the video and then replay it to their partner and make sure that she/he understand how to play the game. The other partner will focus on how to play this game, and she/he can ask any question about the instruction. After they make it the first time, they need to change their roles and replace to play the room again. The group who finish the game first will get a box of chocolate as reward. In addition, after this game, they are all required to write down the kitchen words related to this game as much as possible. The one who write down the most words will also get a box of chocolate as prize.

In this game, what I should do is the walk through to this game. First I will describe each of the pictures together with my students, picking out the words related to this game and focus on some key words. For some new words, I need to pre teach them to help them understand the game.Then I will  read  the clues to the students, clicking each of the buttons  until the end of this game and grading the language to suit the level of the classroom. Then I will give them the guideline for this game and ask them to start. As the teacher, I will also keep on noticing the comprehension by checking how the students moving on in this game.

There are several ways for assessing the learning objective. First of all, as I've mentioned at the end of this game, I will ask them to write down kitchen words from this game as much as possible. From their word lists I can see how many kitchen words they've learned from this game. Besides, I may also use images of these kitchen words,  and let the students write down the name of the images. I can also ask them to replay the game to check if they have understand the game.