A Guide to Teaching Writing During Distance Learning With Minecraft
A Guide to Teaching Writing During Distance Learning With Minecraft
A Guide to Teaching Writing During Distance Learning With Minecraft
By Matthew Farber
October 23, 2020
Summary
Teachers can achieve the 4 Ps in physical classrooms through a station rotation model, as students visit stations with BrainPop or PBS LearningMedia videos, materials needed for project design, or other components.
In the activity, students divide a sheet of paper into six parts or "Rooms." They then follow prompts for writing descriptive text in each room.
As in the paper activity, the goal was to help students write or revise a poem.
NPCs serve as docents, guiding students in a manner similar to the way teachers work in station rotation models in physical classrooms.
Each of the 10 lessons Dillon and his collaborators created invites students to write and also to build.
The lessons invite students to put their Minecraft skills to work.
These opportunities seldom exist in physical classrooms, where teachers may design stations with little student input.
With the Minecraft lessons, students can change the worlds, and teachers can, too.
Students are immersed in exploring a digital environment where they already may feel competent, and so have a sense of autonomy.
These worlds are multiplayer, enabling students to feel like they are again in a community-pixels don't require physical distancing.
Reference
Farber, M. (2020, October 23). A Guide to Teaching Writing With Minecraft. Retrieved November 07, 2020, from https://www.edutopia.org/article/guide-teaching-writing-minecraft