Stage 1 - Determining the Scale of Things
Students were allowed to choose grid paper (small, medium and large) and markers to create their floor plans. But first, there was a lot of discussion about scale to start off with. After explaining that every block in Minecraft is approximately 1 meter cubed, I lead with a few questions like this,
"What things are you very familiar with that are 1 meter wide?"
Good idea to have a few metersticks on hand at this time. Around the room we discovered that an average doorway was about 1m wide and 2m high. This means that a doorway would represent one cube on the grid paper. This lead into a discussion about planning for walls on the floor plans. Yes, you'd need to colour in the walls. I suggested using black to represent all walls.
"So how big is this class room?" Initiated a lot of inquiry. Some student jumped up and measured it and then applied this to conversations I heard around the room beginning with questions like, "How big is the school swimming pool? How big is the main hall? How long is our cafeteria? How big would you build a bathroom? How wide is the school hallway?"
After these great discussions, most students were ready to start colouring. "And I really hope you like colouring!" is how I set them off to this task. One of the rules to getting your blueprints or floor plans approved by the Governement (Stage 2) is to have all squares coloured in. No white space allowed!
Students were allowed to choose grid paper (small, medium and large) and markers to create their floor plans. But first, there was a lot of discussion about scale to start off with. After explaining that every block in Minecraft is approximately 1 meter cubed, I lead with a few questions like this,
"What things are you very familiar with that are 1 meter wide?"
Good idea to have a few metersticks on hand at this time. Around the room we discovered that an average doorway was about 1m wide and 2m high. This means that a doorway would represent one cube on the grid paper. This lead into a discussion about planning for walls on the floor plans. Yes, you'd need to colour in the walls. I suggested using black to represent all walls.
"So how big is this class room?" Initiated a lot of inquiry. Some student jumped up and measured it and then applied this to conversations I heard around the room beginning with questions like, "How big is the school swimming pool? How big is the main hall? How long is our cafeteria? How big would you build a bathroom? How wide is the school hallway?"
After these great discussions, most students were ready to start colouring. "And I really hope you like colouring!" is how I set them off to this task. One of the rules to getting your blueprints or floor plans approved by the Governement (Stage 2) is to have all squares coloured in. No white space allowed!
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