Solve Ratio Riddles with Minecraft Education and Cambridge Mathematics

Did you know mathematics is the most taught subject in the world?  Mathematics plays a crucial role in our everyday lives, and it’s been that way for thousands of years. From managing finances and cooking recipes to understanding space and building new technology, math is indispensable. But when it comes to teaching math, how do you make it sticky? That’s where the power of play comes in. Games can help “uncover the play that is already part of math,” as Yvonne Liu-Constant, a practitioner specialist for Harvard’s Project Zero, puts it in a recent EdSurge article.

This month, Minecraft Education is celebrating Pi Day with an amazing new mathematics lesson. Continuing our partnership with the educational experts at Cambridge Mathematics who supported Mummy Mayhem, we bring you...Ratio Riddles! Ratio Riddles invites students to explore important mathematics concepts including ratio, proportion, fractions, and scale factors. Ratio Riddles makes these concepts concrete and accessible through a series of three engaging and challenging games aligned to 4th, 6th and 7th grade Common Core mathematics standards.

Keep off the Grass

In this mathematical puzzle game, learners will harness the power of fractions to help the Professor of Cartography rescue a group of students who are lost in the school’s gardens! Using rods that represent various fractions of a whole unit of measurement, students will build bridges that allow their classmates to escape without disturbing the delicate plants in the gardens. As they progress to more complex fractions, students will see that there are various possible solutions to each puzzle – they’ll need to use their blocks strategically to avoid running out of supplies!

Window Wiz

Help the Guild Master build beautiful stained-glass windows for the walls of the school in this creative game. Students will build their designs in model frames and scale them up to fit the full-sized window frames by using fractions to express the correct scale factors. After practicing on scale factors with a denominator of 1, they’ll be challenged to use whole-number scale factors with larger denominators. Each step of the way, students can ask for feedback from the Guild Master, who helps guide them to success in transforming their small designs into grand ones! When they’re done, they can step inside the school to admire their work.

Potion Commotion

In this magical game, the Professor of Alchemy challenges students to dive to the bottom of the school’s well to gather coins. But to get there, they’ll need the help of some powerful potions! After being introduced to the concept of ratios with a simple 2:1 recipe for chocolate milk, students will need to create more complex concoctions using greater numbers of ingredients in more complicated ratios. But to make it all the way to the bottom of the well, they’ll need to demonstrate their understanding of ratios by doubling the Professor of Alchemy’s recipes while maintaining the correct ratio of ingredients.

Explore mathematics with Minecraft Education

With detailed lesson guides for all three games and a webinar walkthrough to aid educators in preparation and implementation, Ratio Riddles provides teachers with support and flexibility in the classroom. Explore all three games in a single class session for a quick ratio skills review, or use Ratio Riddles to introduce these key concepts for the first time by building an entire unit around it. Either way, students will enjoy engaging with mathematics in the immersive, exciting world of Minecraft.

Minecraft Education helps make mathematics engaging, concrete, and intuitive for students of all ages. For even more ideas about how to bring Minecraft into your classroom, explore Minecraft Education’s other mathematics lessons and curriculum resources.