Welcome to Phase Two of FutureMakers. In Phase Two, students design, build, and then share. Students use the ideas from their planning booklet and build connections between each topic to plan and create their whole community design.
Students should have already watched all the videos in Phase One (food, waste, water, energy, transport) before watching this one.
Plan
Considerations before teaching this lesson:
- MATERIALS – Build options can include cardboard, Lego, Minecraft Education, or posters. If using physical building materials – what are students allowed to use? How big can their project be? Will the materials be recycled or reused after the project is finished?
- GROUPS – Students can do this project in groups or individually. What will work best for your class/students?
- CHECK-IN – Consider if you want the students to check in before moving to the building phase. Is their planning booklet complete?
- TIME – How much time do the students have to design & build their FutureMakers community? At minimum 1 planning and 2 building sessions are recommended. You can take hours, days, or weeks to complete the project – it’s up to you!
- SHARE – How will the students present their project? Who is the audience (classmates, school, parents)?
Steps
- WATCH – Cue up the video below and watch it with the class
- DESIGN TIME – Give students time to reflect and design in their planning booklet
- SHARE – Have students share their ideas with the class or work in their groups
- GO DEEPER – Add an activity from the extension buffet below (optional)
Extension Buffet
- WATCH – Learn about UN Goal – Sustainable Cities and Communities (3:17)
- SHARE – Encourage students to take their planning booklet home and share it with their parents
- WATCH – Explore current cities working towards being sustainable in this Creating Sustainable Cities video (7:06)
- DISCUSS – Native Land is a resource to help map Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages and learn whose land you are on. Indigenous peoples have been living in communities from time immemorial.
- DISCUSS – Learn about the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples video (3:53) or with this lesson on UNDRIP. Although FutureMakers communities are usually in an imagined place on the planet, how would the community support UNDRIP?
- WRITING – Have students write about a day in the life of their future community.
- RECORD – Have students make a video tour of their Community of the Future to share with others
- VOTE – Host a student vote for the community they would like to live in
- FEEDBACK – Have students share feedback on other projects.
Assessment
- RUBRIC – Draft rubric here – other versions coming soon!
- ASSESSMENT – Try one of the Beyond Recycling Quick Assessment Tools
Project Examples
- LEGO – Student project from Kent State University
- MINECRAFT – Sustainable City on Minecraft Education
- POSTERS – hand-drawn city – printed photos on poster – printed text boxes on newsprint
- RECYCLED MATERIALS – paper eco-building – cardboard eco-community – recycled materials community
To avoid a lot of waste and clutter around my classroom I decided to approach the building of their community very differently. I had my students take rather detailed notes and lots of drawings on each section as we went through so that it will be easier to apply that knowledge to the communities themselves. The next thing I did is I gave each student a fairly large piece of paper(about desk size) to start drawing their community out. They did have the option to join up with other students to make small groups, but most of them stayed on their own as they really wanted to stick with the own ideas they had as we built up in this unit. From there, took their drawings down to an area we call the Greenbelt. This is a fantastic set of walking paths not too far from my school. We took over a section just off of these paths and they built these communities using nature’s resource is around them. The big thing was they could not destroy any living thing – they had to use what they found already fallen on the ground. Because they already had their drawings, they had the option whether to label their community elements or not.
The work ended up looking great! It did take longer than I expected as we were in the pocket forest for about 2 ½ hours, this included the building then presenting time. The class really got into it, and they explained their communities very well while including the 5 elements of sustainability that we learned. The kids are going to still do a reflection for me on the back of the very last page of the booklet. We had several walkers come though who were quite impressed with what the kids were doing, and the students were very well versed in how to explain it as well! Lots of sharing, lots of pictures, and lots of time in nature. A great way to finish up the unit!
This section was really fun and exciting for the students to put together all of the different learning and thinking that they had done throughout. It was very interesting to hear what each student thought was the most important and how they incoorporated that into their community. There was a lot of collaboration that happened; sharing of ideas and bouncing ideas off of each other. It was a great way to end and leave the students with many ideas that they could take forward with them!
I did Community of the Future last year, and I learned about what worked and did not work for my class in the final project. (Last year, I gave them generous freedom of choice, and they went a bit crazy with cardboard and glue guns. No glue guns this year!)
So, I decided to be more specific, and I gave students a large piece of card and they planned out their ideas on this platform. They could work individually or with a partner. After they had planned their ideas, they then added buildings etc. to bring their projects to life. This worked better because they were more focused on ideas rather than distracted by building things. (Although each has its place in creativity. 😊)
I also asked students to type a short paragraph explaining how their community supports each of the areas of sustainability discussed in the lessons.
Students were proud to share their ideas with others when they completed their project.
Students were very engaged in building their community and had fun doing this activity.
I hope to do Future Makers again next year and I might give students the cardboard early on so that they can add their ideas after each lesson. Just a thought.