Enter Minecraft
How do you help a student who has spent their life living in the desert understand the dangers of a snowstorm? What about a hurricane? I struggled with this each year during our third grade weather unit. Weather is one of the areas of science that starts of incredibly simple (when it's cold out wear a jacket) and gets really complicated, really fast (a barometer studies air pressure which is the force of the air pressing down on the Earth's surface). I wanted to make these concepts as concrete as possible, but in a place where the weather ranges from hot to very hot, that felt incredibly difficult.
Enter the weather mod in Minecraft. How do you allow students to experience weather? Put them in a virtual world and then spawn a tornado on top of their house. They get the idea that theses storm are scary real fast, and are VERY motivated to figure out how to protect themselves.
Before you do this with your class, know that there is a decent amount of backend setup. I'm not going to go into all of the details here, but if you want the specifics, feel free to contact me through my website and I'll send you all the info. In this post, I'm going to focus on the teaching structure of the simulation and how it met our engineering goals for the unit. My primary goals were 2:
1) To make the abstract concepts of extreme weather concrete and experiential
2) To move students through the engineering design process (define the problem, research and plan, create, reflect and improve)
Stage 1: Define the Problem
I started this project by defining the problem. The students were going to experience extreme weather and had to design a shelter that would keep them safe. I explained to my class that they were going to experience hurricanes, hail storms and tornados. I then explained that we were going to use Minecraft to experience this. (Cue the mass chaos caused by extreme student excitement.) I told the class that they were going to have 2 hours to build a storm shelter in Minecraft to protect themselves from these storms. The rules were, that they could not use materials that only exist in Minecraft and are not used for construction in the real world (i.e. no storm shelters made of diamonds or glow-stone).
Stage 2: Research and Plan
Before they began building their shelter in Minecraft, we took 2 days for research and design. I have never had my students so motivated during the research phase! Through the research, the students mostly came to the conclusion that they needed to build a underground shelter. On day 2 the students were given a list of the supplies they would have to build their storm shelter. I limited them to a certain amount of materials and a certain amount of time because I wanted them to focus on what was truly necessary in their construction (and not spend time chasing pigs around and planting corn). Students could also request additional supplies by submitting a supply request form. I looked through these and either granted them or gave them back and said they needed better reasoning. This forced the students to really think through their designs carefully. Each partnership was only allowed 5 requests.
Once the class had a plan we had a "welcome to Minecraft day." The students went through a Minecraft orientation game to help those who didn't know how to use the program get used to it. I put all my students in partnerships where one partner was a "expert" and the other was a "newbie."
Stage 2: Create
Then the students spent 2 days building. I can honestly say that I have NEVER seen my students so engaged! They begged for more time each day, and several even requested to stay in at recess to continue their work. I honestly think this could have gone on for several more sessions.
On the fourth session, we began the storms. The students moved their avatars into their storm shelters, and then watched on the screen at the front of the classroom as a spawned different storms over their shelter. Thankfully everyone survived, however several storm shelters were damaged.
Stage 2: Reflect and Improve
Finally the students created a video reflection where they talked about what happened during the simulation, what they learned, and what they would change.
In each video students explained that this was a excellent way to learn about weather because it was "real." When I started this project, my goal was to bring the abstract concept of weather to life for students who couldn't/wouldn't experience this type of weather for themselves. Based on my student's responses, I think that it was a huge success, but see for yourself in the video below.
