Who is Albert?

Albert is a mouse. The house where he lives is called Albert’s House. The computer is used to explore his house and as a means of playing with him – and of rescuing him from trouble . . .

In the Classroom

Albert's House can be used:

In the Home

The program will provide children with an environment in which they can explore not only a house and its contents but also become used to using the computer.

The final option "Save Albert Mouse" is an exciting problem-solving activity in itself and will prove entertaining and educational for children either singly or in groups.

Getting started

When the program starts, the user is shown five buttons which represent five possible set ups. By altering these configurations, the user can control what each button does.

By default, the program shows a different activity assigned to each button. However, you could, for example, set up the blue button to Explore Albert’s House at level 1 and the yellow button to Explore at Level 2. If using multiple languages, you could set up each button with a different language!

The five activities are:

Details about how to use these different activities and suggestions for links with the curriculum are given in the Using Albert’s House section.

Throughout the program, click any text to have it read.

Teacher keyboard shortcuts

To interrupt any activity, press escape to get back to the main menu.

Configurations

Each button is shown with a different colour. In the illustration, we can see the set-up for the blue button. Click on a different coloured tab to see the set-up for another button. You will notice that there is a sixth button available (the green one) which has not been used. If you click on the green tab you will see that the Enabled button has not been ticked. If you click to enable it, the green button will appear on the front screen.

You can set the program up with any number of buttons from one to six, each configured in any way you like. For example, you can set the program up with just one button so that users are restricted to a single activity – or six buttons with the same activity but in different languages!

Levels

There are two levels of difficulty in the program. At Level 2 the user will discover an extra three rooms in the house. In addition, the ‘Save Albert’ game will be harder to complete! The little number in the chimney of the button indicates which level has been selected.

Speech and Sound effects

These can be turned on and off independently. You may wish users to read the text rather than listen to it – and the sound effects might sometimes be an unwelcome distraction.

Activity

This is where you choose which activity will be attached to the button you have chosen.

Global settings

You have the option to set the way Albert’s House Is displayed: either Full screen or Bordered.

Languages

This program is in our Talk·2·Talk range which gives the user exposure to two languages in parallel. This option only appears if one or more additional languages have been installed; teachers have the option of using any two. Contact Resource Education or your usual supplier for details.

If you have purchased additional languages, put the Languages CD in the drive and press CONTROL + F3 from the main menu screen and follow the on-screen instructions.

When the installation is finished, open the Configuration editor (CONTROL + F2) to see the additional features shown at the bottom of the panel.

Title screen language

This sets the language that the program starts in. You can choose from any installed language.

First language

In each of the six Configurations, you can choose which language will be presented to the user as the First language. Any text on the screen and all recorded speech is then in this language.

Second language

There is an optional Second language which will repeat any spoken phrases in another tongue, rather like a simultaneous translation.

Any spoken words will be heard initially in the First language, followed by the same expression in the Second language.

Choose None for single-language use.

The Talk·2·Talk system we have devised can support up to 40 different languages, giving teachers the opportunity to develop skills in both modern foreign languages (MFL) and English as an additional language (EAL/E2L) by immersive means.

There are several areas in which this approach will be useful:

For details of the language sets that are available, see our dedicated website: www.talk-2-talk.com

Using Albert's House

Look round Albert's House

This is an introductory section which allows children to get used to moving around the house. They will be able to move through the rooms in Albert’s House and see the way that they interconnect. To start, click on the front door of the house. You will enter the Hallway. From the Hallway you can move to other rooms and the back garden either by clicking on a door or on one of the blue arrows. Don’t forget to visit Albert’s mouse-hole! In Level 1 you will be restricted to two rooms upstairs, a bedroom and the bathroom. Level 2 allows access to two further bedrooms and, downstairs, a dining room.

To return to the Title screen, click on the door icon in the top right of the screen.

As you move around the house you will notice that some of the objects are animated. You can see the animation again by clicking on the object. (When you go to other sections of the program, the animations only occur a random.)

Activity suggestions

The program allows children to explore the spatial relationship of the rooms in the house. Try building a shoe-box house with just a few rooms. This could be extended to a shoe-box maze where doors are cut in some of the sides of each box.

Each room can be lettered or numbered so that routes through can be recorded. In a lettered maze, journeys could be designed to spell words.

Construction could allow for more than one route to each location from a common starting point so searches could be made for the number of possible routes, the longest, the shortest, etc. There are many links to pupils' own environments.

Further classroom activities linked to subject areas will be found towards the end of this Guide.

Explore Albert's House

The Explore option allows children to find out more details and adds a language dimension. In this option they can examine not only the rooms but also their contents.

Enter the house in the same way. Try clicking on the items inside the rooms. A message will be displayed, describing the object. If you click on the picture or the text in the information box the description will be read aloud. There are plenty of objects to look at, especially in the kitchen. Often there will be a further option to investigate what is inside, beneath, behind and so on. Click on OK each time in order to continue your search. Children should be encouraged to remember what they have seen.

The clocks will display the current time as long as the computer's clock is set correctly. If you click on it you will get a close up of the clock face and the time displayed in figures (and will be read aloud if clicked).

Activity suggestions

At the simplest level children could be asked to find out the answers to questions such as What's on the television? What's in the shopping bag? What's cooking? What has Albert been eating? Look under the thimble; what did you find? Where is the diary? And so on.

Observation skills and positional language can be developed by asking questions such as: Did you see anything behind the . . . ; to the left of . . . ; etc. Children can be encouraged to pose their own questions for others along the same lines.

At some locations the items appear at random – in the flowers, items in the pans and the oven. If you go out of the kitchen and then come back in, something else may be cooking – discuss the reasons for this.

Hide and find Albert

In this option children can play a game with each other. One child places Albert somewhere in the house and another child has to find him. This is done in two stages.

1. Hiding Albert

Having selected Hide and find Albert, move around the house clicking on the doors or blue arrows until you find the hiding place you prefer. Decide on the location where you want to hide Albert, then click on Yes or No on a Hide Albert here? panel.

Where locations have an option to Look in or Look under, you can click on these before hiding Albert.

2. Finding Albert

Once you have hidden Albert the outside view will be displayed and the person who is finding him can search the house (or garden). The mousemeter at the top of the screen (a 'hot – cold' bar) will show when you are near the location where Albert is hidden.

You will need to move the mouse pointer around the screen to see if you get a reading on the mousemeter. It will become longer and redder the closer you are to discovering the hiding place.

When you click on the place Albert is hiding, you'll know! (Remember, he may be inside or beneath something.)

Find Albert

This option is similar to Hide and find Albert except that the computer will hide Albert for you. Go and look for Albert in the same way as in Hide and find Albert. On Level 1 you might get some help to find where Albert is hiding by clicking on the windows at the front and back of the house, although he may be hiding in the garden or mouse hole, of course.

Activity suggestions for Hide and find Albert/Find Albert

Using the mousemeter is a way of handling a clue. The notion of clues can be developed. What clues would tell you that there is a mouse loose in the house? Investigate the idea of hotter/colder. The theme of hiding could be touched upon, including camouflage. We share our houses and classrooms with all sorts of other creatures. Where do they hide? Think about woodlice, spiders, earwigs . . .

To hide, one must keep very still and quiet. There are links to dance, drama and movement here.

There are also opportunities to develop other language skills. One child can be given instructions on where to hide Albert and another instructions on where to find him. Children can also create cryptic clues to decribe where they have hidden him.

Save Albert

Warning: This section will tell you the answers to the problems in the Save Albert task. If you would prefer to discover the answers yourself, select "Save Albert Mouse" from the Menu and start on your adventure.

You must save Albert from a dreadful fate. He is trapped in the back garden because the cat is sitting in the kitchen waiting to pounce! He can only get back to his mousehole if you help him. Go and find Albert in the back garden first . . . If you need clues, rather than answers, just read the following section.

How to Save Albert

In order to save Albert you will need to collect certain items as you move around the house. When you have collected an item it will appear as an icon at the top of the screen. To use an item, click on its icon. When you go to get Albert's Cat kit from his mousehole you will discover that you need to be much smaller. In order to shrink you need some magic biscuits (or cookies) which can be found in one of the bedrooms.

The bedroom doors tend to be locked, however! The key can be found in the kitchen (in Level 1) or in the safe behind the picture (Level 2). Don't eat the magic biscuit too soon or you'll be too small for other tasks.

If you go to get the Cat kit now, you will find that you need something sharp to cut it down with. Scissors are hidden behind one of the books on the shelf on the landing. In Level 2 they are somewhere else! You can now go to the mouse hole to cut down the Cat kit and take it through the kitchen to Albert, but – oh dear, the cat gets you! You are still small and the cat thinks you're a mouse.

Wear a hat next time. If you wear the hat from the hatstand in the hall, the cat (which is not very clever) will not see you as you move across the kitchen underneath it.

At Level 2 the key is in the safe and the paper knife which is on the bookshelf proves to be too blunt. You have to go to the kitchen drawer for the scissors. The jar of biscuits may be in Bedroom 1 or 2.

Another problem you may encounter at Level 2 is that you are unable to carry everything. There's a "Drop object" icon at the top right of the screen, but remember, in order to encourage tidiness, you can only put something back where you found it!

Having overcome all these difficulties, you finally manage to get to the garden and give Albert his Cat kit.

You deserve your reward!

Activity suggestions

Albert escapes by rocket. Balloons make good rockets. What else might Albert have in his Cat kit? In what other ways could he have got back to his mousehole? He spent a long time in the garden – how about drawing or making a mouse-sized garden? What other dangers might a mouse face? Why is it dangerous being small? What advantages are there? There are links here to a number of works of children's fiction.

Classroom activities

The following suggestions are organised according to subject areas but it will be clear that there are many overlaps between them.

ICT

Albert’s House is a simple adventure game where you can try out different ways of solving a problem and explore what happens in imaginary situations.

There are a number of other ways in which the program provides a focus for ICT activities.

To practise entering and storing pupils can begin by making a list in table form of the different items in various rooms. This information can also be entered into a simple database.

Searching the database will reveal such things as how many rooms certain items, such as clothes and combs, might be found in, and which things (e.g. toothpaste) are only found in one room. Such an exercise would be impractical in a real situation because there would be too many items to cope with.

If a large scale floor plan is made of the ground floor (it doesn’t need to be exactly to scale), children can try to make a programmable device go from, say, the front door, as far as Albert’s mousehole.

Design and Technology

Pupils can measure, mark out, cut and shape material such as card in order to construct a simple house. This could also involve assembling and combining materials such as paper, wood, drinking straws and plastic stirrers in order to add rigidity and strength.

History

Saving Albert requires certain actions to take place in a very specific order. Once children have successfully saved Albert, they could put the sequence of events into the correct order.

For example, eat the biscuits; find the scissors; get the biscuits; open the door; cut down the Cat kit; get the key; find the scissors; put on the hat, etc.

They can also practise using words and phrases relating to time, for example:

After we opened the door, we . . .

While we wore the hat, . . .

When we gave Albert the Cat kit, . . .

Before we could get the biscuits, . . .

Geography

Children can be helped to create a plan of the house and garden. They can then plot the route they took in order to save Albert, inserting symbols or pictures at certain key points.

MFL

If you have the French or Spanish language packs installed, Albert’s House can be a valuable resource. It not intended to directly teach another language but provides an enjoyable way of familiarising children with some general vocabulary and, perhaps more importantly, the tone and rhythm of that language. All the language used can be found on the Languages CD used to install your language pack. Just put the CD in the drive without holding down the shift key.

Art and Design

Children may like to redesign Albert's mousehole or imagine that he was adding another room to it. What would his extra room look like? On the same lines, they could consider the birdhouse in the garden. How could it be made comfortable for Betty Blackbird?

Science

Pupils could examine the information gathered about objects in Albert's House (see ICT, above) and create a new table along these lines:

Another kind of table would group items according to what they are made of:

Maths

Albert's House provides many opportunities to use everyday words to describe position and as mentioned in the ICT section, offers ways in which children can become conversant with movements in a straight line and rotations, and combine them in simple ways (for example, give instructions to get to the headteacher's office or for rotating a programmable toy).

English

Speaking and Listening

Pupils can be encouraged to describe what they can remember about different rooms in Albert's House, each pupil in a group taking a different room.

Working with the teacher, pupils can predict what they will find in different rooms and in different places within the rooms.

When a pair or group has succeeded in saving Albert, they may like to describe to the rest of the class the sequence of events – including any mistakes or blind alleys.

While involved in trying to save Albert, pairs or groups of pupils can be encouraged to share their ideas and experiences and to make plans and investigate together.

Writing

Pupils can go on to write simple accounts of their experiences in saving Albert. They can vary the audience and purpose by a) writing instructions in order to explain to another pupil how to succeed in the adventure and b) writing a recount in order to entertain someone unfamiliar with the program.

Work on Albert's House can also lead to some interesting writing of a more creative nature. Children may like to imagine other imaginary worlds hidden from normal adult view - or they may like to extend Albert's world by creating friends and relatives or other creatures such as spiders or an escaped hamster.

In the following poem, pupils can fill in the gaps and then complete the poem by adding another verse or two.

Trapped

The cat was fearsome, the cat was big,
The cat kept watch by the kitchen . . .
Albert was scared, Albert was small
Albert darted across the . . .

He ran through the house, he hid by the clock
He waited until the cat went . . .
But the cat was cunning, the cat was sly
And trapped poor Albert under Dad's . . .

Albert was hungry, Albert was tired
It was past his bedtime and getting . . .
Would the cat give up? Would it go away?
No, the cat was patient, the cat could . . .