Where’s Hansel and Gretel? Right Next to our Year 1s!

Year 1 students are getting a truly immersive virtual experience this half term – improving their writing skills and learning how to use VR headsets. Students are using Oculus Quest to develop their writing skills; by using these VR headsets to immerse the students in a virtual reality story they can expand their vocabulary for writing. 1P are trialling the use of the VR headsets and the rest of the Year group will be using them soon.

The students researched many traditional tales and discussed some of the similarities between them, such as the settings, characters and endings. They then learned how to voice search with Google Chrome to find images that they might want to use in their stories. The children used a wide range of adjectives to find images for the settings they wanted to use as well as focussing on speaking clearly into the microphones. They saved the pictures they wanted and will use them as writing prompts for their stories later on. The students watched Hansel and Gretel in a virtual environment; completely immersed as the story played. They were in the forest where Hansel and Gretel lived and inside the cottage with Hansel, Gretel, their father and their cruel stepmother. They were even in the Wicked Witch’s gingerbread cottage! Being fully immersed in the story led to some wonderful descriptive language, as well as a very high level of excitement!