The Celts – Celtic World
Using Minecraft as a medium for integration,
collaboration and game based learning in the classroom to create an immersive learning experience for the children to enhance their knowledge and understanding all about the Celts, their culture, habitations and customs.
Learning objectives – To enable the children to work creatively to create a Celtic village with NPCs to guide other students around their Celtic World.
Enable the children to work collaboratively in groups to build several Celtic settlements that were found around Ireland.
Lesson 1-
Offline lesson on the history of the Celts and their place in Irish history.
Divide the children into groups based on Minecraft knowledge and experience (Balancing the groups with varied knowledge abilities) to carry out research into the lives of the Celts and their methods of constructing homes and forts.
Use a wide variety of mediums to carry out their research – Text books – Internet – Library – magazines.
Lesson 2 –
The children after having done their initial research will work in their groups to correlate the information they found and decide on what type of buildings they are going to create.
The children will then draft drawing of the building and create small scale models of their Celtic homes and other structures. (Possible art opportunity to create models of a Celtic village/Settlement)
Lesson 3 –
Introducing the children to the World of Minecraft. – In tandem with the class teacher the children will be alloted time to explore the Minecraft World in pairs or alone (giving them the time to become familiar with the functions of moving in the World and creating basic block walls.
In allowing the children to explore the World (basic Block of grass World with creative mode)
they will be afforded the opportunity make mistakes and learn from them in a safe non judgmental way) This lesson will also give the children the chance and freedom to create meaningful content that is relevant to them and will enhance their overall understanding of the Celts and their history.
lesson 4 – Planning and creating a Celtic Village – In this lesson, the children will be invited into a shared World, to start building their collaborative villages. This will most likely be done over a few sessions to allow the children sufficient time to be as creative as they possible can. It is important that each child is given a role or a task to work on to encourage collaborative skills and to develop confidence in using Minecraft as a medium for showcasing their offline and online work.
Lesson 5 – In this lesson the children will be shown how to use NPC (Non player characters) to guide others (other classes – parents – school teachers) around their Celtic Worlds to showcase their work and skills.
This is a great way to build confidence in Children to take pride in their creative skills.
The NPCs are a great medium to show and teach others about the period of history of the Celts and their influence on our traditions and languages.
The children can also create a recording of their villages with voice overs and commentary to share with the wider school community and parents.
These lessons are an excellent way of allowing the children to learn and collaborate in small groups using the medium of Game based learning to work creatively in an immersive world that is hands on and engaging to tie together the work carried out offline and in the Minecraft world of the Celts.
Planning on the part of the teacher is crucial for the success of the lessons.