At my school, we have clubs every Friday from 9:15 to 9:50. This year, I ran a Minecraft Building Club. The goal was to give the students specific building tasks with a time limit, usually 2 to 3 weeks.
Starting in November, I did a large Big City Build challenge, where students worked in groups of 2 to 6. Students were allowed to pick their groups. Students who were quiet or shy were then put into groups if they had no preference.
I did this build for two reasons.
- I wanted to see large student-build buildings
- I wanted students who were quiet with no friends to socialize.
- Enable the opportunity for student leadership.
I assigned a team leader to each group and made it very clear to each team leader that they were not “the boss” of the group. Their goal as a leader was to encourage everyone in the group to build to the best of their creative ability, even if the leader did not really like what they were building.
There was plenty of conflict over the course of the five-month build. Some of it got heated, and I had to step in to mediate a solution-oriented goal for the group. Learning to compromise was a new and important concept that left everyone unhappy.
I tried to let the groups work out their conflicts and always encouraged the team leaders to embrace all creativity as long as it worked towards the goal of building a city.
There was really only one rule that I strictly enforced and was uncompromising about with the group: “Respect each other’s build”.
I ask the studens what they wanted to build for this city build and this was what they cam up with.