Makenna’s Tectonic Chances Blog Post!

Tectonica Blog Post

Wow, time really seemed to go fast while doing this project but here we are again. In this project we had to create a board game including the plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. Making this game helped answer the driving question which was “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in the game design?”.

For the first milestone, our task was to create first attempt game rules. To do this we had to talk with our group of four about what type of game we could make and what we would add into it. We then had to write down how our game would work, and what our ideas were. This milestone was an important milestone in this project because it is how we started off the project.

Some of the other important milestones were milestone two and four. In milestone two we had to come up with 10 vocabulary concepts that we would add into our game instructions.  Along with this we also had to write how we would include each concept in our game.

Milestone four was also important because this is when we finished our final game rules, and critiqued other groups rules while giving them feedback. Milestone four was probably the hardest milestone for me and my partner Theryn because this was when we also got feedback from the teacher, which led to use redoing our whole game and creating the playable one we have right now.

Competencies:

Questioning and predicting:

“Demonstrating a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest”. Having to redo our game meant that we had to use our class time efficiently to get it done and ready for game day. I think we used our class time pretty well, considering not having much time to redo it.

Evaluating:

”I demonstrated an understanding of appreciation of evidence”. I feel that we did a good job on this competency because we included the theory of plate tectonics into our game while supporting evidence into the theme of the game. Something we could have done better on for this is to include 10 key concepts in our instructions and have written them in.

Understanding and solving:

We developed, demonstrated, and applied mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving by having game probability in our instructions.

One of the other stepping stones that helped show my learning for the project is what we did in the app MindNode. In MindNode we made a mind map of ideas, anything we knew about plate tectonics and any questions we had, and I even added some of the game concepts we came up with. I personally liked doing this a lot because it was a good way to organize my thoughts and helped keep everything nice. Here is a picture of my mind map that I made and a picture of our final game board.

The last milestone that we did was milestone six. This milestone was the most important milestone because its how we ended the project. For this last milestone we got to play other peoples games, and play our game with other people. I personally liked this milestone a lot because I got to see what ideas other people came up with and learn how to play there games.

Now for the best part, here are the final game rules my and my partner came up with and created!  Tectonica game rules

In this project I showed my understanding of tectonic plates, volcanoes, earthquakes, and more, by creating a game that included mostly everything it needed. I also demonstraded my understanding of the probability math that we had to include in this project by completing all of the textbook questions, and math worksheets such as the multiplying fractions. 

This project was exciting and fun and thanks to my partner Theryn, we got the game done and ready in time. Some of the challenging parts of this project were having to redo our whole game again, our game not being the correct size, and having to do the math probability for the instructions. The fun parts of this project were finishing the game, and getting to build and create ideas.  That concludes my blog for this project, I hope you enjoyed reading it!

-Makenna Crawford