Festival Maker · Lesson 4
Lesson 4: Build Your Festival
Students design and build a 3D model of their music festival using the data, playlists, creatures, and loot they collected during gameplay.
Student Objectives
I can…
- ✓ I can use data from gameplay to design a festival model.
- ✓ I can connect songs, creatures, and loot to design choices.
- ✓ I can work with my team to plan and build a 3D model.
- ✓ I can use scale and proportion when creating structures.
- ✓ I can reflect on how data informed my decisions.
At a Glance
Total: about 47 minutes| Section | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome & Grounding | 5 min | Play music as students enter and invite them to notice how it makes them feel. Display the "Think" slide and have students reflect silently on Day 3, then invite a few to share. |
| Connector | 5 min | Students choose the playlist from the slide that best matches their mood today, then share their choice individually or with a partner. |
| Review Visual Agenda & Agreements | 2 min | Review the "Today's Adventure" slide and the classroom agreements, highlighting teamwork expectations for the build phase. |
| Festival Design & Build | 30 min | Review the festival components — audience and helpers (creatures), music (playlist), and venue (materials and loot). Teams plan their festival design and identify how their collected loot will be used as building materials. Students then work in teams to build their festival models, constructing structures and features that represent their data-driven decisions. |
| Reflection & Closing Ritual | 5 min | Students make a connection to one Data Habit of Mind and record it in the Data Habits of Mind Tracker. Guide students through a brief "Creature Reset" — a short calming/reset routine — to close. |
Materials & Prep
- Sentence framesFor planning and explaining design choices (optional support).
- Multilingual vocabulary cardsOptional support.
- Visual reference postersOptional support.
- Sensory guide
Gather
- Playlist data
- Region-specific lootBuilding material for the festival models.
- Data-specific lootBuilding material for the festival models.
- General building materials
- Scissors or teacher-approved cutting tools
- Tape (masking tape)
- Hot glueTeacher managed, if available.
- Noise-reducing headphonesOptional support.
- Pause cardsOptional support.
Digital
- Facilitation Slide Deck — Day 4
- Computer with sound and projector
- dataadventures.orgStudents need access during the session.
Before You Teach
- ☐Set up the materials buffet with region-specific loot, data-specific loot, and general building materials.
- ☐Ensure all student data and materials from gameplay are available.
- ☐Cue music for arrival.
- ☐Display the visual agenda and sensory guide.
A note on this lesson
This is the build day. Students take everything they collected during gameplay — data, playlists, creatures, and loot — and turn it into a physical 3D model of their festival. The session is designed to make the connection between gameplay decisions and design choices concrete, and it sets students up to share and explain their models on Day 5.
The heart of the lesson is the 30-minute Festival Design & Build block. Before teams start cutting and gluing, ground them in the three components a festival needs: an audience and helpers (the creatures), music (the playlist), and a venue (built from materials and loot). The planning step matters — teams should decide how their collected loot becomes building material before they begin constructing.
What to watch for
- Pacing across design and build. Protect the planning phase so teams don’t rush straight into building without a data-driven plan, but keep the build moving so every team finishes something to share next session.
- The data–design connection. Reinforce that the loot and materials each represent a decision grounded in data. Monitor for misconceptions in how students are representing their data through their structures.
- Multiple ways to participate. Offer flexible roles within teams — students can plan, build, or explain. Keep sensory tools, sentence frames, and multilingual vocabulary cards (audience, playlist, venue, model, loot) available for students who need them.
- Predictable routines. Maintain clear transitions and model the work before independent build time; allow students to observe before participating.
After class
Store the festival models for the next session. Reflect on pacing, engagement, and collaboration, and note any misunderstandings in the connections students made between data and design so you can revisit them on Day 5.