Class Village
Students will need to explore and find their way through the maze. Collecting resources that they can use when it's time to build their village.
Updated: June 3, 2022
Learning objectives
Personal and Social Capabilities: Identify the characteristics of an effective team and develop descriptions for particular roles including leadership, and describe both their own and their team’s performance when undertaking various roles within the game Mathematics: Plan and construct structures within Minecraft. Taking care to explain the measurements involved in the perimeter, area and volume of their buildings. Civics and Citizenship: Describe and explain how people participate in their community as active citizens through building the village and sharing resources. Design and Technologies: determining planning processes as a class, managing time and resource allocation throughout production, identifying the steps and sequencing steps to collaboratively produce a designed solution
Guiding ideas
• How will you and your partner best work together to get through the maze?
• What is the best way you can use the grid paper when designing your building?
• When deciding on what block of land you are going to build on what are some things you might need to consider?
• If one of you needs to go back into the maze to find more resources what will the other person do on your land while waiting for them to go back?
• How can you best use your time?
Student activities
Students will need to work together in pairs to make it through the maze. When they get to the end of the maze there is an underground tunnel that will take them to the beginning of the village. While they are in the maze they will need to collect resources that they can build with once they have made it through the maze.
There are some free build areas that the students can build on in the maze if they want to plan how to get out. Once they are in the village area there are some teachers who will give them some tips on rules they need to follow and quests they have in the village. On each block of land there is a chest. In each chest is an iron door and pressure plate. Once the students have chosen their land they will need to put up their door and pressure plate so that no one else can get into their land.
There is a sign outside each block of land with what needs to be built on it - this can be changed before lessons start by the teacher if needed. Once students have chosen their land and put up their iron door they are given grid paper to plan a bird’s eye view of the plans / designs and also create side views of what they will build. As the teacher in creative mode you can chose to reward students who create amazing detailed plans with extra resources in their chests. (I have also been rewarding students who work together well with their partners in a similar way.)
Some blocks of land are bigger than others some have more resources than others. It is good to point out to students that they could choose their land according to the resources they could collect from it - eg some have more animals on it, while others have more trees on the land.
Performance expectations
Throughout the Maze students are expected to stay with their partner and work together to collect as many resources as they can. Once in the village they can split up but one person must always stay on their land as with the iron door and pressure plate installed, if they both leave they will be locked out. (I made a rule that if both students get locked out of their land then as consequence I will take other collected resources from their chest) Mathematics expectations - using grid paper students are expected to design their buildings after researching similar buildings online.
Designs must include measurements in meters, title and a key if needed. Designed must be completely labelled. Collaboration expectations: Students to work with their partner and always planning and analysing what can be improved. Students to use design thinking process when working with their partner. Civics and Citizenship: Once the village has been build students can then start to trade for goods - example the students who built the marketplace will need to trade with the students who built the farm, so that they have goods to sell. Other expectations can be found from the learning objectives
External reference
Skills
- Citizenship
- Collaboration
- Creativity