Robinson Crusoe & Swiss Family Robinson

Educational Booklets: Reading Extracts and Activities

Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson Resource Pack


Maps

Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson .mctemplate file (recommended)

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.


The third Litcraft build is a double-island build which allows for comparative work with two early literary texts: Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe; and Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss.

We created both islands and linked them with a Minecraft rail track (there is also a hidden portal between the islands). Tasks start on Swiss Family Robinson island and move across and back to Robinson Crusoe’s island. Extracts from each text are paired up across the core events of the "Robinsonade" (shipwreck narrative). These include:

  • Stripping the Wreck
  • Exploring and Place-naming
  • Setting up Home
  • Making a Boat
  • Mini-island adventure

This resource engages children with earlier texts (1719 and 1812) though in an abridged form. It could still be used as a whole class reader but equally a teacher could just rely on the extracts.


Instructions

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 of the island 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.

  • Preparatory reading and vocab tasks
  • IN GAME ACTIVITY [lasts around 30 minutes]
  • Follow Up task

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:

  • Whole class reader (read the text together and then use the resource for key lessons)
  • Reading Intervention Groups (Litcraft as a way to re-engage reluctant readers)
  • Libraries (we have a series of library partners who use it in school libraries and in main library events)
  • SEN use – Litcraft works well with small groups