KS3 Lesson Plan - A27 Biodiversity Game

Introduction

Working with ecologists on the new A27 Road Scheme in England, this game was developed to showcase how biodiversity is explored by ecologists on engineering projects. In this game they will identify several animal habitats. They will then be tasked with documenting these with a camera, book, and quill. Their second task is to continue building a green bridge to help wildlife safely cross the road.

Learning Objectives

  1. Identify the 6 different animal and fungus habitats.

  2. A basic understanding of the importance of biodiversity for the environment.

  3. Understanding the different job roles related to this work.

  4. Continue building a green bridge

Guiding Ideas and Questions

  1. What is a habitat and how do they help animals thrive?

  2. Why is it important to have lots of different forms of biodiversity?

  3. What different job roles did you find?

Performance Expectations

The students will be expected to produce a workbook showing pictures of each of the habitats in the game with written facts about them. They will also continue building the green bride.

Lesson Structure

The video below is a guide on how to play through the lesson.

Roughly 45-minute-long lesson - can be longer or shorter depending on what works best for the class.
Students have video guides for each lesson, but teachers/facilitators can use this as a guide to follow along with, or if they chose not to use the video guide for some/all the lesson.
The game begins once the students are all logged into Minecraft Education Edition and loaded into the A27 Biodiversity Game.

Part 1 –

Students will spawn into the National Highways offices. Here they can interact with the NPCs (non-player characters) who will either give them bits of information or say generic greetings.

Allow them to explore for 5 minutes.

At the end of the 5 minutes get them to go to the corner office and interact with the ‘Meg’ NPC. They are not to click on the character, or teleport to the scheme, until the next part.

Part 2 –

Get the students to click on the character, read what they have to say, and click on the button to be teleported to the scheme.

They will then be teleported to the forest area of Lake Copse. Here they should interact with the first NPC who will give them more instructions. They can then head into the portacabin to find out how the game will work. An NPC inside will explain the game, that they must use a camera and a workbook to find the plants and animals around the scheme, take a photo of the habitat and write down facts they learn. Each plant and animal are represented inside the portacabin. They will need to find –

Plant Species – Red Campion
Fungus – Conifer Blueing Bracket
Animals –
Water vole
Slow worm
Bats
Foxes
Bees

There are also NPCs in the portacabin that will give them different facts about the scheme, and NPCs spread around the map who will talk to them about different job roles. Make sure they get the camera and workbook from the NPC outside. In the video guide they will be shown where the fungus is as an example, this will also show them how to use the camera and workbook.

Part 3 –

Allow them the remaining lesson time to find out all the NPC facts inside the portacabin, talk to all the NPCs across the map who discuss their job roles, and find all the flower and animal habitats. At the end of the game the students should have workbooks with pictures of each of the flower, fungus, and animal habitats, plus the facts written next to them.

If some students haven’t found all the flora and fauna, they can come back to this later or in another lesson. Once the time is up or they have finished this part, get them to head back to the portacabin.

Part 4 –

Inside the portacabin is another NPC who will teleport them to the second part of the task. Get them to interact with this NPC and teleport to the next area. Their task here is to continue building the green bridge. Green bridges allow animals and wildlife to safely cross roads. To continue building they have access to blocks inside the chest that they can use. They will only be able to build within a certain space