Kensuke's Kingdom Resource Pack
Kensuke's Kingdom .mctemplate file
To use the resource you need to already have a Minecraft licence installed on your device. You can then upload our templates and play. For help with this, watch this short video.
For our second world-build we chose a text that is extremely popular with schools and widely used. The language is much easier than that of Treasure Island, the chapters are shorter and we made simpler comprehension and in-game writing tasks.
This is another island narrative but concerns the shipwreck of the British boy, Michael and his encounter with a Japanese man already shipwrecked many years before. Again, children re-enact the role of Michael. They move around the island undertaking various tasks in each session (decoding a message in a bottle; making a model of the island; spending "A Day in the Life" of Michael).
The core method for Litcraft is the same across all of our builds. The main aim of the resource is to re-engage children with literature by creating a positive loop between the experience of reading, the immersive experience within the game-world and the return to the text. Children follow instructions given at the starting point in a series of chests and readable books. They can also write in-game. Trials of the resource have clearly shown that Litcraft enhances comprehension, engagement and empathy with the main character in a first person text.
All of the lessons are structured in such a way that pre-reading and preparatory tasks warm up the children and prepare them for the in-game activity – then they enter the world and play the in-game task – then they come out and undertake a follow-up writing activity.
There are usually between 4-6 tasks for each world that correspond to key chapters and passages within the book. We recommend children working in PAIRS or THREES using the worlds on an ipad.
Litcraft has already been used in a range of ways: