Quinn Wolfer and Rayna Trabish stand with their new trophies alongside Medicine Hat senior planner Shawn Champagne at city hall on Monday.--Photo Courtesy Lee Krasilowez
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
Monday saw two students from Ross Glen School awarded for their work in a long-term project done in partnership with the City of Medicine Hat, using popular game Minecraft to pitch ideas for future building projects.
The students, Rayna Trabish and Quinn Wolfer, are in Grade 4 and 5, respectively, and were recognized for their takes on an affordable housing building and assisted living facility.
Students from multiple schools took part in the project, with some initial direction from Shawn Champagne, senior planner with the City of Medicine Hat.
“I got to teach them a little bit about the development process, like, what the Land Use Bylaw is, what the building code is, what the regulations are on the sites, so that there would be a restriction on the building height and the size of the building and the amount of parking that they would need,” said Champagne.
These buildings were constructed on replica versions of real Medicine Hat empty lots, built by tech education teacher Dave Van Leeuwen.
Trabish, for her part, was surprised and excited to be selected as a winner for the assisted living facility project as selected by Champagne. She explained that when she was creating her project, some people at the forefront of her mind were those who might live with anxiety, or ADHD, who would benefit from some of the additional structures she proposed.
“I put a pond, a pet friendly area, a library, a little sitting area and a hot tub,” said Trabish. “And a parking lot, of course.”
Trabish had used Minecraft in the past, and said she had a lot of fun bringing the game into the classroom to use for educational purposes, as well, and she enjoyed thinking about what senior residents might enjoy as they needed to move into her building.
“I added a pet area, because people like pets and if they have pets and they’re moving to an assisted living facility, they could bring their pet with them,” said Trabish.
It was because of this explanation, said Champagne, that her entry stood out when he was judging. He said he found himself drawn to projects where students had clear explanations for why they were including certain features, which is what ultimately caused him to select Wolfer and Trabish’s work.
She added that she had to use a lot of math in her project, though didn’t articulate exactly what she had learned, something Van Leeuwen said may actually be ideal for large projects like this despite the many connections to the curriculum.
“I almost love when that happens,” said Van Leewuen. “Some of the best learning happens when you don’t know that you’re learning, because you’re in it and you’re just doing it. And you’re not thinking about the fact of like, Oh, I learned this today. Is her spatial reasoning better now? Absolutely. Does she have a better understanding of percentages? Certainly. And she learned it all while having fun.”
Students were engaged in their understanding of area, percentages, shape reflection and translation and angles in math, as well as computer science goals for the science curriculum and creation of presentations and speaking for English language arts.
Van Leeuwen expressed his gratitude to the city for their participation and helping expand the worlds of students, both in helping to create the assignment and in giving tours of city hall to the class that contained both winning projects. He looks forward to hopefully making this an annual event for students, though he was slightly less enthused about the prospect of building further empty lots for new sites.
The sentiment was echoed by Champagne, who said he would be happy to work with the division in the future on similar ventures to help students engage with the city, and potentially, discover new avenues of interest in engineering or planning.
