My students were tasked with writing a persuasive letter explaining why a particular individual deserved a monument in their honor.
First, I had my wife print envelopes that mimicked real bulk mail. Each one was addressed to each student in my class. Needless to say, they ate it hook line and sinker. They were asked by a state committee to choose which person deserved the monument. As a bonus, we were going to create presentations that showed their designs for the actual monument. They needed to use symbols to show their reasons for choosing their person. Their options were Ellison Onizuka, Thurgood Marshall, Susan B. Anthony, or Jackie Robinson.
After expending a large amount of time researching (taking notes via iBrainstorm), organizing their research (via Mind Mup), and writing their letter in correct form (via Google Docs), they were ready to create. Each student was grouped with other students who chose the same person. Then they linked up worlds in Minecraft and began crafting away.
Each group spent time creating designs, destroying them, tweaking them, and creating all new ones (kind of like the writing process, right?). Some chose blatant symbols, for instance, a space shuttle for Ellison Onizuka, while others chose rather abstract symbols. For Thurgood Marshall, one group created a fountain that had fire coming out of some dark stone. This was explained to me as him showing the light on ignorance in our society, but it only looked like that at night. That came out of a third grader. I think that is proof enough of the effectiveness of Minecraft and general Educational Technology.
I am blown away by their creativity and so proud to be their teacher!
Below are some examples, see if you can tell who is who 😄
