Mind Craft with Minecraft: DCB Students Battle for the Best Fortress

Last January 16, our Junior School held their first ever House Minecraft event!

Suited up in their battle armours (that looked a lot like DCB House shirts), our Junior School Minecraft troopers banded together with their House teams to create a replica of the fortresses set for them by their House Captains at the start of the school year.  

Year 6 students hard at work building their fortresses

The idea of a Minecraft competition, the brainchild of Head of House Jamie Jones, came about after Mr Jones noticed how much the students loved the game. Adding to the twist is the fact that Mr Jones had never played the game until setting his mind on organising DCB Junior School’s first Minecraft House Competition. “I just took it upon myself to learn what it is, to put that into a competitive House Minecraft event and how we could use this as an educational experience for the students,” he shared.

Minecraft is known by most as an interactive game where children build houses in a cubic 3D world and survive the night against cartoon “mobs”.

As much fun as Minecraft is as a game, when used as a design and collaborative education medium it is so much more. This project has been a hugely successful one and an amazing demonstration of student agency at its finest. From a relatively simple concept, students have been able to innovate, collaborate, problem solve and demonstrate skills in creativity in a wonderful digital medium. In fact, many world-leading institutions from all over the globe have started to engage with Minecraft in their education projects and activities, such as the US, UK, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, where many successes have been achieved.

The students were assessed on several categories, and they used all their computing and communication skills to build their chosen House fortresses.

And the result? Plenty of teamwork, collaboration, negotiating and decision-making according to our Head of School Jacinth Gurdon, all while having a fantastic time. In fact, they’re already looking forward to the next challenge!

See what our students had to say:

Scarlett from Year 6

This House event is about working together and building a fortress using Minecraft. Everyone had to work together, so this event was slightly difficult. After building the fortress, judges came over and checked our fortress, the creativity around the castle, and overall, how many points your House will have based on the assessment rubric. 

This event helped people understand how important listening and collaborating with other people are. Everyone is full of creativity, so it was a wonderful opportunity for everyone to show their skills. We hope (to have more of) this kind of House event that needs creativity, listening, collaboration, kindness, respect, resilience, responsibility, and open-mindedness. 

William X from Year 5

This week Monday we had a House Minecraft event. At first, I was not very happy with our buildings, but after building it some more and decorating it, I think it came out pretty good. 

After break time, we did some more decorations, and we also made a pond.  When the judges came, we started to shoot fireworks. I was very happy that the judges said that we were the best. 

HOUSE MINECRAFT

And the honour of winning our first ever Minecraft House event goes to… Wodehouse! Congratulations! We look forward to the next Minecraft House competition!

Photos: Jamie Jones