Venturing into ELA

Our current ELA unit focuses on healthy foods and good nutrition.  How can I incorporate Minecraft with that?  I decided that we do some research into what food items in Minecraft restore the most health and then have the kids build a garden that will allow them to produce those food items.

I found some wikis that contained this information specifically for Minecraft PE, through together a Custom Search Engine and let the kids begin researching.  Their intention was to figure out the best way to use a garden that 12x12 (I don't know why everything ends up being 12x12), not forgetting to make space for water!  The first lovely issue we ran into was the content filter for our district.  These sites were considered a "discussion board", thus they are blocked.

One student had the thought that we could download a Minecraft Crafting App and still find the information we needed.  I had him find one on Google Play, made sure it was safe (and free), then we worked together to download the app.  Inadvertently, the kids learned how to navigate Google Play and download an app.  This brought up conversations about permissions that Apps are granted by the user.

Once they had the App, they were off and rolling.  Using a graphic organizer to collect information and compare the various food types, then planning the locations of each block in their garden using a Google Sheet.  All of this would be simply an excuse to play Minecraft, except that they had an important writing piece to go with it.  They have to first discuss what "Good nutrition" is and then compare and contrast some of the food items that are available to them.  Finally, they must relate this to the real world and discuss how eating healthy is important for your overall health.

For this activity, we were able to incorporate many different skills.  The kids had to do research, cite their information, plan and organize the solution to a problem, and collaborate with others to accomplish a common goal.  Due to the always inevitable technology issues, we also had a chance to learn about digital privacy and how app stores work.

We are still in the process of completing this project, but pictures and descriptions will be in the next post!  I also recently received a document camera, so I hope to be able to post a video tour of one of these projects soon!