Discovery
At this point, I kind of had an idea myself as to how the Tech Leader’s ideas of coloured blocks could be mathematical but I needed to coach them with the ‘Grandma technique’
[The ‘Grandma Technique' is an idea from Sugata Mitra who said ‘Don’t tell the children what or how, simply guide with questions your grandma would ask. Simply say ‘how might that work?’ ‘what do you need to make that work?’ and ‘Do you need to ask another adult or a leader how to make that work?’]
The discovery was guided in this way: What are we going to make? And how will everyone know what to make? The answers were colours of blocks and a map of the picture they are going to build. Ah! I said, what tells us a map is a map? They came back with ‘co-ordinates.’ So, if we have co-ordinates how will each person in the team know where to go? They responded with ‘If we have a numbers up the side and letter across the top, then we have a map with co-ordinates!’ A mathematical angle is born.
The map idea was born with a ‘discovery’ element that turns Minecraft into orienteering but with Minecraft blocks. This is the puzzle side kind of done.
My issue here, and I asked the Tech Leaders this, was that I felt this was a bit easy. That the teams would arrive and compete to build a House-made picture in creative mode where, say, Elang House would make a collaborative picture in race against the other Houses of Beruang, Singa and Harimau.