Minecraft Vessel Project

Project Timeline:

The following is an outline for my Minecraft Vessel Project.  Each bullet is one lesson, which will each be about 1 hour long.  I plan to do these activities during the third week in March, over the five days.  The extensions on the project can be a continuation if the kids are interested in continuing, or if the activities run shorter than I planned.  

• Introduce the project – creating a vessel on Minecraft.  Give all of the guidelines and scoring grid.
• Do research on large water vessels on the internet, and through books.   Discover what you need to include in creating a vessel that is functional and practical.
• Create blue prints to show what will be on the vessel, and keep in mind that each block is 1 meter^3. 
• Calculate the amount of materials needed to complete the vessel.  Types of blocks, amenities, etc…
• Create the vessel on Minecraft.

Extensions:

•   Create a model representation of the vessel so we can see both inside and outside. 
•  Create an actual vessel that can be placed in water and propel itself forward, using the same guidelines as the Minecraft blue prints to test if it will float.

As for class, I really enjoy working with graphs, distance and time, and coordinates.  It's fun for me.  I have always enjoyed it.  It got me thinking about the STEM lesson for this week.  My plan is to do a common distance and time problem like we did during class today.  Have the kids figure out which fuzzy critter gets through the maze quicker, according to the information I provide.  Then to take it to the next step and have the kids create a maze in Minecraft and spawn an animal to go through the maze and try to get data from that to create their own word problem.  They can then swap their problems and solve those new problems.