Minecraft for Sustainability Part One: Setting Up

I am so excited to finally be able to write that this is happening. We are using Minecraft for learning! Gamers!

In this unit of inquiry, the children's inquiries are into systems for sustainable communities. I really loved the PBL we did for Maths, but am loving this one even more - I feel like we are using a greater and more balanced variety of tools to work through the inquiry process.

A quick outline to map out where we've been and where we're going:
We spent the first couple of weeks tuning in to the concept of sustainability - reading related literature, linking to the folk tale of the Tortoise and the Hare and then to the concept of stamina, which they were familiar with from PE class. We spent 4 days on camp in the Seewinkel National Park, learning about national parks, organic farming and living, as well as studying local flora and fauna. It was really important to me that we didn't just dive straight in to gloom and doom and 'You must do this or the world will end!', and that the children were given plenty of opportunities to enjoy nature and develop their sense of wonder for the world.

On returning to school, I introduced the PBL task: use Minecraft to collaboratively develop a sustainable community. But we didn't dive straight in.

In preassessing the children, I found that many of them didn't have much prior knowledge about the systems we use to get energy, food, water, process waste, etc etc. And so my first priority was to ensure that they developed knowledge and understanding of the different systems that communities rely on to get the things they need.

In a brainstorming session, the children identified some systems that communities need. Initially, they identified the need for systems to get food, water and energy, building and planning homes and cities and getting materials for building. It proved to be really helpful to think back to the systems in place at the WWF base at Seewinkelhof, and to extrapolate from there to 'the real world'.

The children broke up into groups and chose a research focus to further develop their background knowledge for sharing later with other groups, jigsaw style. To scaffold for these beginning researchers, I created a text set with relevant articles and videos (differentiated, of course!) that they are able to access via Flipboard on their tablets at school and home. We also have a trolley with a variety of related books from the library, that we share with the other Grade 4 classes. While the children were researching, I spent time conferencing with each group, recording related questions and slowly guiding them from the 'How do we get water/energy?' kinds of questions to the 'What are the most sustainable ways to get water/energy?' kinds of questions.

I decided that the best way for the children to record and share their thinking and research was with paper and pencil, and so each group worked to create brainstorm-style charts to show their thinking and the information that they found. These brainstorms are displayed on the bulletin board at the back of the class for ease of sharing. The children are also able to refer back to this information during Minecraft sessions and other related activities in class. Here are some pictures to show what we've done so far.

I thought about making this process entirely digital, but I'm finding that it's really important to have some things in tangible as well as digital form. We can photograph or use Thinglink to publish this information online later, if needed.

Things I really liked about this part of the inquiry: students really engaged with the content - I saw a marked increase in knowledge and understanding of the concept and related information. I am also pleased that I spent time putting together a text set with Flipboard - the children spent a lot less time surfing the internet and a lot more time engaging with relevant texts at their own level. Also, the wide range of resources available for research (books, videos, online articles) and the role of iPads in the research process led to a much more engaged group of students overall, meaning less of my teaching time was spent on behaviour management and more on helping students to work through their inquiries. Win!

After this (ongoing) jigsaw was up and running, we began playing Minecraft. I have a lot to think and write about, so will end this post here and devote Part II entirely to the Minecraft component.

Redefining Awesome

We are almost halfway through week 2 of the school year and I can tell you already what my greatest challenge this year is going to be: helping my kids to redefine Awesome.

Inspired by Kid President, I decided that this year should be an 'Awesome Year' for my class. We watched and laughed along with the video.

Then we brainstormed.
'What could we do in class this year to make sure that Grade 4 is an awesome year? What kinds of things would you like to try?' I asked.
In planning, I knew this was a great hook activity. Inspired by Kid President's energy, enthusiasm, humour and ideas, and because we all know that all nine-year-olds are bursting with exciting and creative ideas, my kids were going to lay the foundations for a learning-packed, student-driven year of amazingness.

I didn't have the heart to take a photo of it at the time, but here are a few ideas from our first brainstorm, entitled 'Our Ideas for an Awesome Year':

• reading
• writing stories
• maths games
• free time

There is definitely potential for fun and enjoyment here, but... Honestly, does your inner 9-year-old scream 'Awesome!' at this list? Why are these the limits of their expectations?

Don't get me wrong - I value that they love to read and write and do maths. 

But what about inquiry learning? And 21st century skills and tools? As well as the myriad other tools and resources for inquiring and creating and presenting we are so lucky to have at our school?

On our second try, this is what we came up with:

Created with Padlet

Reading and writing and maths games are still there, but so are baking, listening to music, programming, building and creating new games.

Obviously, I learned from this exercise. Kids DO have exciting and creative ideas. Sometimes (often?) it takes a bit of work and ingenuity for grown-ups to access them, is all. Next time, I will plan for this :).

The closest to being an artist I will probably ever get..

Spare time lately has been spent finding some great resources (Twitter is my best friend) and squirrelling them away with Evernote. It's so exciting that there's so much great stuff out there, but wow, so distracting. I need to learn to manage my Twitter addiction - finding great resources is way too much fun. Turning those resources into useful and manageable plans takes a bit more concentration.

So this last week (with many, many lapses into Twitter-play) I pulled out my Inquiry model and began to put together a skeleton plan for my first Unit of Inquiry. It's like walking a tightrope. Too much planning and it's no longer student-driven. Crazy control-freak teacher takes over and every second of learning is choreographed. Too little planning and I fall off the other side of the high wire into freakout land, where no learning happens because nothing is organised and I can't remember where or what the awesome stuff I bookmarked is.

I am sure that there are teachers out there who can plan for inquiry with their eyes closed, hands tied behind their back and dancing a jig, but I need my skeleton plan. This is not the same as the PYP planner - I am a linear, chronological thinker and while I am a big fan of backward design, when I'm in the midst of teaching I need to have all my ducks lined up nice and tidy. This beautiful beautiful document outlines all the important info (Central Idea, Inquiry Lines, guiding questions, phases of inquiry, reporting outcomes, cross-curricular links, resources) I need to stay on track, while still leaving plenty of time for student-directed learning. What it looks like at the beginning of a unit is something that would probably have earned me a 'fail' at Uni - it's a big table with all the 'have-tos' filled in and lots and lots of blank spaces. In the sparsely populated 'filled-in' bits, there are notes for activity outlines, there as a 'fall-back'. These lessons will be adapted (or completely scrapped) as needed - they are my support for when everything inevitably snowballs.

So now that I've got all my skeleton bones neatly arranged, I plan to print it out, blow it up to A3 size and subject it to lots of wanton scribble and many additions and crossings-out as the unit progresses. Last year, I trialled doing all my planning and amending online, but it didn't work for me. I am a scribbler - there's just something so satisfying about taking a nice tidy word-processed planner and scrawling revisions all over it in pen. It may be the closest to being an artist I ever get :).