Technolandy

Day 95 (of 2025/26) #gamification of #literacyweek : communication & thinking via @taskmaster @taskmastereducation 

Sampler:

PowerPoint to play with based on Literacy Week: Taskmaster Literacy Week.pptx

Here’s some of the rationale… TaskMaster is a fun gameshow – a panel of comedians taking on tasks…. And so well crafted that it hasn’t really changed all that much between series one and the upcoming series 21… the brain child of Alex Horne (also a talented musician with his ensemble the Horne Section – that also has a tv presence). Tasks that are designed to be considered with both creative and critical thinking strategies.  The website taskmastereducation shows how this concept was then taken to a learning approach – and has provided a lot of community and engagement in taking on well crafted tasks that help students also focus on thinking and communicating. Event he advent calendar was a work of art (and some frustration…. Delightful frustration). 

So, as I continue a week of some … new literacies… I want to share some of the story telling… creating… and reflecting on school learning through this weeks TaskMaster: Literacy Week edition.  And took a guess around time limits. One of the good parts about TaskMaster is that you can limit how much time is available which ensures participants know that they won’t be frustrated forever… at least so far…

The First Activity is a Prize Task: a bit of a prethink activity – great to give to students as homework ahead of time… this first activity is just to get some discussion going – what is the best/most important book of all time?

Then I wanted to push some thinking about story creating, and of late I have preferred giving limits as opposed to minimums. This second task is a creation one: to tell a story without words. This parallels another activity I like to give students in a group activity (more on SOLES in a bit) and create presentation about the most endangered animal with only five words.

Third challenge is to be mean. I loved the making words process of spelling. Looking for word patterns and exploring words by knowing how letters go together. It was a fun station – a 12 letter word all scrambled up with the challenge being trying to figure out what the word was, but also looking to build multi-letter words as well (usually would cap the number of 3 and 4 letter words). But today’s challenge was mean. I know it was because I did a test run with two TaskMaster fans who were adults and missed the blatant trick: the ‘mixed up letters’ actually are a word in the way it’s presented. Sometimes the answer is right in front of you… we learn this frequently on Taskmaster with great mirth.

Fourth challenge was another creation activity based on composing a six word story. Limits can be fun!

Fifth task was a group task. I love SOLES – Self Organized Learning Environments allow for groups to flex and form on their own – ever since Sugata Mitra introduced them, they have been my favourite way for students to work together: https://technolandy.wordpress.com/soles/ And our group task was to create either a twitter/x post (writing) or an instagram share (visual) that would entertain the taskmaster. I was pleased all the way around.

Our sixth was a physical task – a repetition of one of the favourites in our live events: 9.58 – bang the drum in exactly 9.58 seconds with bonus points for the most marvellous walk (an EA won those when she did ‘the worm’). Of course we played the amazing clip (no spoilers) online for inspiration!

The “Final” Task was a Spelling Bee. Literally I had them spell different bees (starting with bee) with increasing complexity until only one remained standing.   

I find it interesting how engaging these tasks can be for students to (gradually) take more and more risks in front of their peers, and become more and more okay with failing. 

The actual final final task is my ‘homework task’ which comes from the TaskMaster board game (found at a thrift store!!) which has ‘secret tasks’. These are the ones that are fun personal challenges… things to do in front of your friends and family and see if anyone picks up on them. 

And then I get to share with teachers…. Students did some great work that permeates throughout BCs English Language Arts Curriculum – including the First Peoples course we emphasize in grade 10… 

—> Construct meaningful personal connections between self, text, and world

—> Respond to text in personal, creative, and critical ways

—> Recognize intellectual property rights and community protocols and apply them as necessary

—> Express an opinion and support it with evidence

And of course, depending on the theme, more content, curricular competencies, and Big Ideas can also be explored in a fun way. Again – the risk taking is huge… many of our students are learners who do not want the limelight… or any attention. To see some take risks in a public (still small) environment knowing that it’s okay to think critically, creatively, and sometimes incorrectly is why I keep bringing out TaskMaster – and love the work and shares that taskmastereducationcom continue to share. It’s not free, but it’s also not expensive, and reach out – the resources they have are ready to roll out and work with.