Planning suggestions:

Think of how will you break down and scaffold the mathematical skills (i.e., measurement, perimeter, area, operations, etc.) that students will need in order to successfully complete this project? How will you help students develop strong interview questions and prepare their presentations for contracting entity? What informational texts can you use as resources throughout this project? How can you use these texts to build students’ knowledge and deepen their literacy skills?

Milestone 1

How can we design a sports facility that meets the needs of our school?

• Give students the challenge of creating a dream sports facility using Minecraft as an entry event. Give them some criteria and constraints for their building, or leave the task open-ended. Have students share their designs using a gallery walk format or have them project their designs to share one at a time with the whole class.
• Consider connecting this entry event to the project by debriefing the challenge with questions such as the following:
  • What did you consider when you were building your dream sports facility?
  • Do you think this would make a good sports facility in real life? Why or why not? Introduce Risk & safety and the costs associated to being safe.
  • What do you think people have to consider when they plan a building project? Weather, Heat/Sun-UV?/Rain/Wind?
• Discuss the expectations for the final product.
• Ask questions such as these to prompt student thinking about what they know and need to know:
  • What sports facility have you ever played in and what do you remember of them?
  • What do you think might need to be included in the blueprint used to build a sports facility?
  • What needs might families have to consider when taking their children to a sports facility?
  • What might a budget for a sports facility include?
• Create a project wall to help visually scaffold this project.

Milestone 2

How are houses and buildings planned and built?

• Engage students in research to learn about how houses and/or buildings are planned and built.
• Facilitate activities and explorations to help students learn about area and perimeter. You can walk around campus and calculate the area and perimeter from sections of the school.
• Once students have practiced finding the area and perimeter, give them time to explore the sports facility plans. They can use graph paper to draw their own and label the dimensions of their plan along with its area and perimeter.
• Along with their individual sports facility plans and measurements, have students write an individual opinion paragraph about why their sports facility makes good use of space.
• Revisit the list of need- to-know questions with students (suggested above).
  • Identify questions that have been answered, as well as new questions that have emerged.
• Support student reflection throughout this milestone with prompts such as the following:
  • What are you most proud of in your sports facility design? Why?
  • How well do you think you understand area and perimeter? Is there anything you still find confusing?
  • Is there anything you still wonder about how houses are planned and built?
• At this point split your class into smaller groups. Observe their work on the independent sports facility plans in order to balance the groups based on skills or interest.

Milestone 3

How can we find out our contracting entity’s needs?

• Help students develop a list of questions to ask their contracting entity. Have students organize their lists in one of several ways, depending on the needs of your students, any prior experience they may have with conducting interviews, and how much time you have to spend. Have student teams or individual students begin by brainstorming their own list of questions and then share their questions with the whole group to develop an agreed-on list. Or have the whole class work together from the beginning to develop a list of questions. Regardless of which method you choose for developing the list, consider helping students by asking the following starter questions:
  • What were some decisions you had to make when you designed your sports facility?
  • What might you need to know about your clients’ community/families?
  • If you were hiring someone to build a sports facility for you or your family, what would you want that person to know?
• Facilitate client and student team meetings.
  • Before student teams meet with their client, give them a chance to practice asking questions and recording answers. Have student teams then pair up and practice asking each other questions so they become comfortable with their question list. Have students also practice introducing themselves and their project to their clients as well as asking for contact information in case they need more information about something.
  • If possible, have contracting entity to come in person to meet with their assigned student teams; if not, have contracting entity and student teams meet by using a virtual conferencing program. Depending on how many teams you have and how much time is available for the meetings, briefly go over the project with the whole group yourself or let a few students introduce it. If not, have student teams introduce themselves and the project before asking their questions.
  • Consider having student teams send thank-you notes to their contracting entity or send a thank-you from the whole class to each contracting entity.
• Debrief the experience with your students and discuss how it went, how it felt, and what they might like to change in the future if they needed to interview a contracting entity again.
• Support student reflection throughout this milestone with prompts such as the following:
  • How did it feel interviewing a contracting entity for a project?
  • Did your team work well together during the interview? How might you have improved your collaboration?
  • Did you get any ideas from the interview?
  • Are there any of the contracting entity needs you think it will be challenging to meet?
  • How did your expectations of the project change after you interviewed the contracting entity?

Milestone 4

In what ways can we meet our contracting entity needs with a sports facility construction

• Help students organize their client information to inform the design of their sports facility. Provide them with a graphic organizer to use as they read through their interview answers. Explain that they can sort the answers into three categories, as shown in the following example:
  • Need
  • Want
  • It would be nice to have
• Determine the building constraints for your students: get informed about US State construction regulations.
• Provide these guidelines to your students as construction limitations before they begin to build.
• Consider using a budget to determine how large the sports facility can be—a budget determined either by the contracting entity or through a random draw of a card—but keep in mind that giving students a budget for their construction will add time to the project as they look up the prices for items and other costs.
• Once students have organized their contracting entity input and know their construction constraints (whether they are determined by average sizes or by budget) have them begin using graph paper to draft their sports facility blueprints. Have students keep in mind the total area and perimeter as they design, because that information will be shared with the contracting entity during the presentation. Remind students (or even make it the role of a team member) to return multiple times to their client information to be sure that the sports facility they are designing will meet their contracting entity needs.
• Have students also use this time to draft their team opinion paragraphs. Consider having each member of the team write an opinion paragraph on their own, then the team can use pieces from each paragraph to create their final team paragraph. Note that this method also gives you another individual assessment point for students.
• Students must be able to justify budget costs.

Milestone 5

How can we improve our sports facility to meet our contracting entity’s needs?

• Students receive feedback from the contracting entity on their blueprints and opinion paragraphs and finalize their products, including a 3D model of the sports facility.
• Remind students that the most important thing on which they should focus is their contracting entity information; their sports facility design first and foremost needs to meet contracting entity needs.
• Once the students have finalized their blueprints and opinion paragraphs and both are in a high-quality form ready to share with contracting entity, have the teams begin constructing their 3D model. Consider the resources you have and how much time you have to spend on constructing the model.
• Have students build a model that looks right to them; however, in both the 3D model and the blueprint students must label the dimensions of the sports facility using the correct units.

Milestone 6

How can we share our sports facility with our contracting entity’s and get construction approved?

• Give students time to practice their presentation.
• Invite the contracting entity back into the classroom to meet with their student teams or, if necessary, set up virtual meetings.
• As students begin to share with their contracting entity, encourage clients to ask questions and give students feedback. Consider putting together a feedback slip for contracting entity to fill out or suggest the clients give students verbal feedback on their designs.
• Be sure to schedule time to celebrate a job well done with the class. If you can, find a place within the school or on a website to display the student work; even though the most authentic audience is the contracting entity themselves, students will be proud to share their work with the community also.
• If time and resources permit, consider partnering with a building trades program at a local high school or community college or a handy community member to actually build the sports facility that the students designed.