Think Before You Spend!

Class Information

• Grade: 9–12, Social Studies, (students must be 13 or older to participate in this class)

• Lesson timeframe: 2–8 hours, depending on student familiarity with Fortnite Creative

• Featured tool: Fortnite Creative

• Class / learning environment: A Fortnite-capable device with a one-to-one device-to-student ratio, and with internet connectivity. A computer lab or mobile laptop cart should provide the ideal environment.

Author Contact

Author: Katie Wright

Email: [email protected]

Twitter:@mrs_katiewright

Lesson Overview

Are you ready to create a game in Fortnite for your peers to play?

Fortnite Creative provides an incredible sandbox environment to create game worlds and areas to explore. Well, have at it! In this activity, your resources (money) are limited. You will have to keep your game under budget. This will force you to make some important decisions regarding resources, structures, and game elements. Create a fun and challenging game for your classmates without breaking the bank!

In this lesson, students will be asked to make choices and reflect upon those choices as they build a game. Students will work with a budget that adds a level of real-world experience to their learning.

This lesson requires students to think critically about their choices and collaborate with their partners to produce a game that is exciting but stays within their budgets.

Essential Questions/Big Ideas

How do our preferences affect our economic choices?

How do consumer preferences affect decisions on issues of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods?

How do the constraints of a specific budget change our priorities?

Enduring Understandings

Students will begin to understand how their own preferences affect their economic choices. Students will understand that the choices they make affect their overall experiences.

Learning Outcomes/Objectives

Students will be able to make better choices when making their own personal economic decisions. Students will be working toward clearly articulating and demonstrating the need to make sound economic choices in order to achieve personal financial gains.

Students will also begin to understand the importance of consumer preferences and the design/distribution of a product.

Students will be able to use terms such as opportunity, cost, and choice to clearly articulate to their peers their understanding of how a budget will affect their choices.

Standards

NCSS Theme Strand III: Production, Distribution, & Consumption Students will gather and analyze data, as well as use critical thinking skills, to determine how best to deal with scarcity of resources.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.4 Present claims and findings, emphasizing salient points in a focused, coherent manner with pertinent descriptions, facts, details, and examples. Use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.5 Include multimedia components and visual displays in presentations to clarify claims and findings and emphasize salient points.

ISTE Standard 1c: Empowered Learner Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrates their learning in a variety of ways.

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards 21st Century Life and Careers 9.1: Personal Financial Literacy 9.1.8.A.6 Explain how income affects spending decisions.

ASSESSMENT EVIDENCE

What will be the evidence of learning and how will that be used to guide instruction?

Assessment Overview

Using the island they created, students will identify and analyze their opportunity costs and their economic choices. Students will be able to clearly explain how our economic choices are affected by consumer preferences. They will do this using economic terms as well as the plain language of their peers.

Assessments

Students will present their final projects by:

• Students will create their game using the parameters of the lesson.

• Students will complete a gallery walk and play each other’s games.

• After playing each other’s game, students will create a feedback form in order to improve their game. Students will be responsible for creating a method of surveying each other. I suggest using Google Forms as it is easily accessible.

• Once feedback is collected, students will screen-record their island and provide analysis of their choices. Students will be asked to provide specific analysis of how their choices affected the overall experience of the game. Students will also explain how they could change the game to better meet consumer needs but still stay within their budgets.

Extension: This can be a schoolwide event or stay within their classroom.

Fortnite is not available in class: Students will have more choices in this option as it lends itself to many different routes of presentation. The instructor can ask students to use Creative at home if it is permitted by their parent/guardian.

If they are able to complete their game, they will create a recording of their island using whichever method is preferred by the student.

Students will provide analysis of their choices. Students will be asked to provide specific analysis of how their choices affected the overall experience of the game. Students will also explain how they could change the game to better meet consumer needs but still stay within their budgets.

Suggestions: If they do not wish to or cannot use Fortnite at home, they can create a presentation that use pictures and/or video.

This presentation can be given in front of a class or in video format, depending on the goals of the presentation itself.

Learning Plan

Learning Activities

Warm-up/Suggestion

Ask students to choose between items or different situations. This can be done any platform, from Nearpod to the use of PowerPoint and whiteboards. For example, I like to play “Would You Rather?”.

List of possible questions:

1. Would you rather go on your dream vacation for only 3 days or would you rather take a 7+ staycation with unlimited access to television and the internet?

2. Would you rather have one pair of REALLY nice shoes or several pairs of okay shoes?

3. Would you rather play one hour of your favorite sport or hobby with your idol (think Lebron James) or you would rather have the skills of your idol for 1 year?

Instructional Block 1 (20 minutes)

Introduce the lesson by stating the goal of their game. Students are tasked with creating a game that is considered “fun” by their peers. Students will be asked to form groups of the instructors preference. These groups will be assigned a point value based on the instructor’s preference.

Students will be asked to review the video regardless of their access to Fortnite. They will pick their island and post it to a discussion board such as Schoology or Padlet, with their reasoning. If discussions are not available, students can use whiteboards to write their reasoning down. Ask students to keep their islands to Arctic Island or Ice Lake Island. The Frosty Fortress is already built.

The instructor will create a spreadsheet using preferred software. The spreadsheet will have a list of prefabs and devices with assigned point values (see list below). Once students are assigned their point value, they will use the sheet assigned to them.

If students are not familiar with how to use Google Sheets or Excel, this will take some time to complete with them. It’s important they understand what cells to use. If students change the wrong cell, it will create a problem with their totals.

Suggestion for distributing points: I prefer to use a game app such as Kahoot or Quizlet to make a game. The game can be content related or the teacher’s choice of topic. Have groups compete in the game. The team with the highest amount of points will win the highest point value. If you prefer to do it at random, you can have students draw sticks or straws.

Suggestion for using Creative: It’s important to establish the guidelines of the game in what they can actually use. This will be verified by the instructor before the game is played by any other person.

Fortnite unavailable: Students will still be able to fill out the spreadsheet, but you will need photos descriptions and videos to guide their choices. (Here is a video of islands and prefabs.) This can be done by the instructor, or ask students to create these videos if you would like to personalize it. Students love that they can say, “Dad! I need to use Fortnite for my teacher! I’m helping in class!” Photos and descriptions can be found using the Fortnite Creative Documentation website.

Instructional Block 2 (25 minutes)

Students will go into Creative to explore which prefabs they will choose for their island. Each island is slightly different than the other. The geographical features and cost will play a role in which prefabs they choose.

Suggestion: Allow for 15 minutes, depending on the depth in which students analyze their opportunity costs. There is room for extensions on the learning in this part of the project.

After students have chosen their prefabs, direct them to reflect on their choices and what they will have to give up in the next round of purchasing. Students will reflect using the Pros and Cons Worksheet.

Questions to ask students to reflect on as they fill in the worksheet:

1. Will this prefab create a challenge within the game?

2. Will this prefab provide any resources?

3. Will this prefab be easy to defend?

Suggestion: This can be done in many different ways. Post-it Notes, Flipgrid, Nearpod, or any other reflection of the teacher’s choice. This will aid students in their discussions during their summative presentations.

Instruct students to now explore their options for devices. This is a longer list and will take slightly longer to make decisions.

Suggestion: For the sake of pacing, it may be essential to keep to a certain time allotted. Students will select the devices they would like to use for their game.

This list is smaller than the actual list of devices because it does not include any weapons, but it does include traps. Students will need to shop and place their items around their island.

As done previously with prefabs, ask students to reflect on their decisions. Allow for the reflection to lead to changes in their final decisions and designs. This will lead to students completely changing their island or game design. This is an important step as it fosters critical thinking and in-depth analysis of their decision making.

As students are completing their islands, they will fill in their Pros and Cons Worksheet to help them identify which item is best for them based on their budget and the overall effect on the game.

Questions to use in reflection using the Pros and Cons Worksheet:

1. Will these devices create a challenge in the game?

2. Are these devices useful in game playing?

3. Are these devices restricted to only being in one location?

Fortnite unavailable: Photos and descriptions can be found on the Fortnite Creative Documentation website.

Here is a video of the islands and prefabs if you do not feel comfortable asking a student. Asking students to find their own photos may be a great extension into practicing research and citing of information.

Interdisciplinary and 21st Century Connections

Provide curricular tie-ins with relevant content areas.

This lesson provides experience for the students with communications. This can easily be tied to an English lesson for students to demonstrate an ability to speak to their peers. This lesson can easily be manipulated to include Math for the purposes of calculating or scaling the island for presentation purposes.

This lesson specifically addresses creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration as a part of the 21st century skills:

• Students are creating a game that consumers would want to play.

• They are analyzing their decisions and using critical thinking skills to decide what are their best possible options when working with a budget.

• Students are communicating how their choices affect their overall experience in the game.

• Finally, students are working together to create this game in pairs or in groups. This allows for a more robust discussion as to what consumers will want to see in games. Students will work together to try to create a game all will want to play.

Modifications and Accommodations

Students with accommodations will need more time to analyze their options and provided the appropriate response time. Chunking of the choices would be an excellent way to keep students motivated. Only provide students with three choices at a time and ask them to pick one. This may alleviate the stress of looking at all of the options at once.

Consider providing a template for the presentation if Fortnite is not available.

Resources

Fortnite is available:

1. Computers/devices capable of running the Fortnite software.

2. A Google Sheet or Excel document of prefabs and devices.

3. Analysis sheet of pros and cons (see downloadable list below).

Fortnite unavailable:

1. A Google Sheet or Excel document of prefabs and devices.

2. Analysis sheet of pros and cons (see below).

3. Video of islands and prefabs.

4. Pictures and descriptions of devices.

Downloadable Teaching Materials

You can download the following printable PDF documents for lesson support:

• A PDF version of this lesson plan.

• A set of worksheets for students.

• A rubric for grading student projects.