Kindergarten
Unit 4: Game on!
Essential question: What can games do for ourselves and others?
Project Description: Students explore what games can do by playing and creating games. Inspired by Caine's Arcade, students become game designers as they develop a new game to showcase at a school event such as a Fundraiser, Open House, or STEAM Family Night. Students engage in the Design Thinking Process to create a game that includes pushes and pulls and a change in motion. Their constraint is that it must be made out of recyclable materials.
Students explore sound as they create music using technology to enhance their game. They integrate mathematics by assigning a scoring system to their game and they develop their writing and communicating skills by creating how-to play instructions for their games. Ultimately, students see the power of games and how they can bring us together.
NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS
Performance Expectations
K-PS2-1. Plan and conduct an investigation to compare the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object. [Clarification Statement: Examples of pushes or pulls could include a string attached to an object being pulled, a person pushing an object, a person stopping a rolling ball, and two objects colliding and pushing on each other.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to different relative strengths or different directions, but not both at the same time. Assessment does not include non-contact pushes or pulls such as those produced by magnets.]
K-PS2-2. Analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull.* [Clarification Statement: Examples of problems requiring a solution could include having a marble or other object move a certain distance, follow a particular path, and knock down other objects. Examples of solutions could include tools such as a ramp to increase the speed of the object and a structure that would cause an object such as a marble or ball to turn.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include friction as a mechanism for change in speed.]
ONLINE Learning REsources
The Calendar and Resource Slides have been adjusted for online learning, however detailed lesson plans have not been created for online learning.
Check out the Caine's Arcade video to see the inspiration for this project.
*Unit 4 is also inspired by CA Science Framework IS4: Pushes and Pulls