This week my class had the opportunity to return our district’s resource centre/ technology lab twice. On our first day, we read Wolves in the Walls (Gaiman, 2003), and then in pairs, walked each other through the VR adaptation of the book (Fable Studio, 2020). I found navigating the VR experience to be challenging as I had only used VR once before, but it was also rewarding to be able to struggle a bit and figure it out (isn’t that what learning is all about anyways?). As you might imagine from the cover art, Wolves in the Walls is a charmingly creepy book, equal parts fun and eerie- much like Coraline, another one of Neil Gaiman’s books which was later adapted into a movie. Aside from the gothic atmosphere and Dave McKean’s gorgeous surreal illustrations, the Wolves in the Walls book just didn’t really resonate with me. I felt that there was great potential in the story to acknowledge the themes of ownership, reality vs. imagination, or security, but it turned out to be a missed opportunity. Regardless, I can understand why this book is a fun read for many students, and I do think I would have enjoyed it at that age purely for the suspense and excitement. After practicing independently, my feelings about the VR adaptation were very similar. In times like these, I need to curb my bias by referring back to Sometimes Reading is Hard (Bright, 2021). Below is a quote the author selected that perfectly applies to this situation.
“You know what the best book of the year was? … The one that a striving
reader stuck with until the very end. The one that made a child ask for a
sequel. The one that a child saw themself in. If a book was loved by one, it’s the best book!”(Tanaka, 2020)
The following day, our class partnered with students from a local elementary school at the technology lab to explore this story together, through both physical and digital formats. First we divided the book into sections and set up “reading stations” throughout the school, in little nooks and storage closets to mimic the setting of the story. Students were put in groups, which cycled through each of the physical locations where teacher candidates would read their respective story sections. I thought this was such a fun idea, and I think it was quite successful! The length of this story meant that without those breaks to move and the novelty of hearing new reading styles, I don’t know if all students would have been able to sit through the full book. I will certainly be borrowing this unique storytelling method for my classroom one day, and I think it connected to the grade 6 English Language Arts big idea “Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.” While students weren’t necessarily enacting this curricular competency, I think that we were modelling “Use and experiment with oral storytelling processes” to them.
After the story session, students rotated through stations where they would either play the VR experience or work on a booklet of literacy activities based on the story. To me, the students seemed to be engaging with the core competency of communication (specifically the “acquiring and presenting information” facet). Since VR is so new to me I hadn’t given it much thought as a type of media that students may need to be “literate” in, but when I saw them navigating the story in this way I realized how different it was from consuming other digital media like videos. One thing I noticed is that nearly all students who were at the workbook station, even ones who had already completed the VR experience, were glued to the iPads where they watched classmates’ VR perspectives being broadcast in real time. Part of me was uncomfortable with seeing their attention so focused on an activity they were “not supposed” to be doing, but part of me thinks this is just another thing I need to learn about. Students seem to love watching other people play games, in livestreams or recordings, and that just might be something I can use to increase buy-in to a lesson one day. Who knows!
