In this research project it is investigated, if and how a specific didactical design can be the base on
which, pupils in 5. grade in a preliminary school can work with reading comprehension through the
game Dicewars.
Dicewars is a simple, free, online strategy game, that was chosen for this purpose, because it
presents possibilities for cross curriculum learning activities.
In mathematics focus in the game was on statistics, probabilities, chance and strategy. This was to
ensure, that the pupils could understand enough about the games’ mechanics and rules in order to be
able to form a relevant strategy in the game.
In Danish, as L1, Dicewars was treated as a multimodal text, which the pupils should read and
demonstrate deep comprehension of, through their collaborative conversations. Furthermore, the
pupils collaboratively wrote paratexts; instructive, multimodal manuals for the game. They wrote the
manuals to three years younger pupils, thereby again needing to demonstrate deep understanding of
the game as a multimodal text in order to be able to explain it to others.
Underlying goals for the didactical design were to expand the pupils’ language with words and
phrases, that are needed in the context of school work, in order to secure, that the pupils not only use
everyday language, but actually learn more sophisticated use of phrases and words.
The didactical design in this research is a third iteration of the design, and the methods through which
data were gathered are: Video analysis, reflective questionnaires, text analysis and semi structured
interviews. The amount of gathered data is rather small due to corona-related issues in schools.
The analysis shows that it is indeed possible to further curricular and multimodal reading
comprehension through collaborative work with a computer game as text.