Learning Target: Students will be able to evaluate the composite Surface area of composite shapes with Triangles and rectangles.
Task: Students will calculate the surface area of composite shapes in a Minecraft world
Lesson Setting: Students work for SpaceX and are part of an initiative that involves growing food in space on composite shapes. Students were tasked with finding the surface area of the various composite shapes selected by the Spacex development team and determining which shape could produce the most food.
Materials: Students were given a worksheet to write answers and show their work. Students also required a laptop with which to work on.
Time: Students had 40 minutes to complete the task. This could easily have been a 90-minute task.
Setup: Set in “immutable world”, “creative mode,” and unable to equip any items
The world was built in the Minecraft lesson based in the International space station. Using Amulate the space station was deleted. I created a corridor for students to walk through. Using a command block set to repeat with this code:
Execute @e x y z fill ^^^10 ^^^10 glass
I created a sphere of glass. Then using amulate increased its size 3 fold.
Reflection: This lesson will still require modification. Students struggled through the problems. We worked through the first problem together. However, they required so much assistance I did not do this lesson witht other 7th grade class.
What needs to change;
1) dirt blocks are to difficult to count by sight. A block that can be easily counted would do better.
2) Students need either to;
- a) know how to draw the 3d shape and then label it’s lengths or
- b) have an image of the shape to label. I tried this; however, the shape options did not match the 3-d shapes well enough.
Student Work Sample