Lesson Plans, Ideas, and Student Work Samples related to Minecraft 

Ideas from Feeding Change

General Cross- Grade Ideas

Character Education

- cooperation = trying to finish a quest sometimes needs multiple people

- responsibility = if you take from the chest, put back in the chest (once you learn how)

Literacy

- idea generation for writing (so many possibilities!)

** Please click THIS LINK or THIS OTHER LINK or THIS THIRD LINK if you'd like to see some student work samples. The activity was pretty open-ended. The (grade 4) students were allowed to pick a screen shot from this wiki's photo gallery and write about the photo. Some chose to do descriptive writing. Others chose to make inferences based on the visuals. The third team did a neat diagram of the emotions that emanate from the picture.

Numeracy 

- geometry & spatial sense

- number sense & numeration

** Please click THIS LINK to see some student work samples. In the same lesson where we had the free writing, students had the choice to design a shelter in Minecraft. The (grade 4) students were allowed to use the tool of their choice for expression (most used Notebook 10) and this pair calculated how many blocks we'd need to build the house. I didn't make them do this - it was their idea.

Ideas by Grade Level

Grade 4 - Science! Rocks & Minerals - with all that mining going on there's great opportunity to discuss different types of rocks, getting rocks up from the earth, where they're found, etc.

** Pleasse click THIS LINK if you want a copy of the lesson plan that I'm using with a Grade 4 class. The lesson hits science, media, and oral communication. Please see the video below, made by one of my grade 8 students, that went along with this lesson.

Grade 4 - Social Studies

 Medieval Times - "Describe characteristics of castles..."  build a castle that has as many feature of a medieval castle as possible.  Goups could either try to replicate real castles they research, or create their own; in both cases they would have to identify features their castle has with it's original(s).  

Class project could be to construct a medieval world, different groups would be responsible for researching and respresenting their areas i.e. farms, blacksmith, mill...  Students could be asked to create a venn diagram comparing the challenges they faced in creating their area and the challenges people in medieval times would have faced.

Grade 5 - Science - Energy Conservation - burning wood and coal is resource intensive and a great way to show kids the real meaning behind renewable and non-renewable - they can keep a tree farm and harvest wood for energy, but have to keep searching for new coal deposits.

Grade 5 Social Studies - Ancient Civilizations

- innovations in ancient civilizations depended on the available resources in the environment (e.g. Mayans & Incans did not develop the wheel partly because it was not useful in their mountainous terrain) > how does the terrain we have in our area impact the sort of tools and technology we develop?

Grade 6 Social Studies - Canada & World Connections

- on multi-server, how to separate groups interact? compare this to Canada and its neighbours

Grade 6 Social Studies - Interactions b/n European Explorers and First Nations People

- play single player alone, then play multiplayer with people who already know the game/terrain well > write reflections, make connections to the reliance on the original inhabitants for the newcomers to survive, impressions, etc. 

That's if for now. I had more but forgot them. They'll come . . .

Grade 4 & 6 Social Studies - Mapping (Provinces & Territories / Interactions b/n Explorers)

- how do you remember where everything is? Make a map of your Minecraft area

Lesson Plans, Ideas & Student Sample Work that use Games other than MINECRAFT

Wolf Quest Launch Lesson Plan - by LOD

Disney Website Lesson Plan - by DC

Introducing Webkinz (Making a Tally) Lesson - by DM

Understanding Webkinz Conventions Lesson - by DM

Media Formats in Webkinz Lesson - by DM

Tour Webkinz (Making a Spreadsheet / Financial Literacy) Lesson - by DM

Voting on Name for Webkinz (Collaborative Decision Making) - by DM

Summer School 2006 Game Unit - by DM