Project Mindcraft, Engage!

Today, we started.  It was a little bit scary for me, however the room was buzzing with excitement.

I had the students complete 2 tasks, both were review skills from our first Topic in math.  Their first task was to create a number line that showed the days in the month of their birth as well as their birthday.  This was a review of using a number line to show a number.  It was a pretty simple concept and doubled as a way for them to get used to Minecraft's interface.

The second task was more complicated.    They were shown 5 different blocks and told to find the number of 2 block combinations that they could make using only 1 of each type.  Earlier in the week, we took a formative assessment where the students needed to find the combinations of outfits if a person had 2 shirts and 2 pairs of pants.  Most students simply said, that makes 2 outfits.  I estimate that probably only 5% had gotten it right at that time, so we needed to try again.

To start we had to discuss the expectations and cover objectives for the day.  My objectives were:

We will...

• Represent numbers on a number line
• Make a list to solve a complex problem
• Solve a problem collaboratively
• Reflect on our activity to improve our future interactions

At the end of the time block, we stopped and the kids took a short survey in Google Forms.  

I was hoping to keep this activity to under 40 minutes, but most of the kids were not done.  Some problems arose as a result of technology and it slowed our completion.  

The results of the survey are found below:

How much motivation do you have to complete the tasks in class using Minecraft?

How much motivation do you have to complete the Practice homework sheets?

How well did you and your partner work together?

How successful were you in completing the tasks?

Average rating:

4.157894737

3.526315789

4.263157895

3.631578947

Additionally students were asked what ways they attempted to solve problems.  However, they did not realize that they could choose more than one answer and the data was not accurate, we will fix it for the next activity.

Examples of the Number Lines created:

These students created the number lines out of blocks.  The first struggle that they had was figuring out how many days were in their month.  To do this, one of them remembered that we have a calendar app on the tablet and he used that.  Once they figured out the number of days, they had to space the "tick" marks out equally across the top.  Most students put a sign in front of their number line to show where their birthday would fall.

Examples of the Combinations task:

This student created a row of 4 blocks that he stacked the different blocks on top of, thus "listing" out the possibilities.  You'll notice that there is one row that has a gap in it.  After creating this, he realized that if he used the same type of block on top of itself it was not correct because you only have 1 of each block type.

Two more examples of the combinations task.  These two students worked with the same method as the first.  You'll notice some minor mistakes in the second one, but they were not able to finish it due to time.

My thoughts:

This was fun for the students and they were more focused than usual.  In a typical 40 minute block with this group, I end up redirecting individual students at least 10 times.  Today, I only had to give 2-3 redirections. Why?  The kids were working on their own and utilizing each other to solve problems.  This kept them talking and working.  Only about 4 of the 11 groups completed both tasks, however, this was teh first time that we used Minecraft.  I think that there was a bit of a learning curve and the students were figuring out each other's strengths in order to make their groups more efficient.  Later today, the kids will write about their experiences and I will be able to get a better picture of this at that time.

Things to do differently:

As of right now, I think the only thing we will do differently is increase the number of worlds that students use.  Pairing 4 tablets (1 tablet is 2 students) together on one world is creating issues with getting disconnected, slow gameplay, and overall confusion about who belongs where.  I'm thinking that unless they are doing a large group activity, we will put 2 tablets on 1 world.