Lesson Guide - Lower Thames Crossing Creative game

Introduction

This game is designed to be played during lunchtime or after school clubs. It is an open design world where students can complete challenges over the course of days, weeks, or months. The player is given the role of ‘design intern’ and asked to explore 3 different challenges.

Learning Objectives

  1. Get creative and design and build within the themes of future roads and ecology.

Guiding Ideas and Questions

  1. What will roads look like in the future?

  2. What will transport look like in 50 years’ time, and how will we travel across the river?

  3. How can we develop the area above the tunnel to create an area for wildlife?

Performance expectations

The students will creatively build different things in response to the three challenge questions.

Lesson Structure

Before they start please explain what Highways England does -

'Highways England manage and improve England's motorways and major A roads, helping our customers have safe, smoother and more reliable journeys. We're the government company which plans, designs, build, operates and maintains England's motorways and major A roads, known as the strategic road network (SRN). Make up of 4,300 miles of motorways and major A roads which are at the core of our national transport system.'

Part 1 –

They students will start in an area of the Lower Thames Crossing scheme. In front of them will be boards with instructions. They are being tasked to complete design challenges. They can pick which challenge they would like to do first and then use the game to design their ideas.

This game is designed for students to complete the challenges over longer periods of time during lunchtime or after schools’ clubs. For example, they could spend one term on the first challenge, the next term on the second and another term on the third. It is up to the teacher/instructor to give them the time limits that they think best fit their students.

Part 2 –

There is a structure block included in the world for the students to use. The structure block allows them to save their designs as 3D files. Instructions for the block are available in game, and are as follows –

The block to the right is a structure block, anything built inside the lines it creates can be exported and saved on your desktop. Right click on the block to adjust the box to build inside. When you’re done, right click on the block and export your design. Only designs built inside those lines will be able to be exported.