Your norms
Establishing program norms with your students provides a powerful foundation for your MSA program. This activity will only be done during the first meeting; however, it should also be revisited at the beginning of each school year. Having agreed upon norms helps build the community and culture of your program. Setting up guidelines about the behavior and attitude expected of students is an easy way to build community.
Since the students are an integral part of the Minecraft Student Ambassador program it's very important for the students to be involved with establishing these guidelines. The more invested the students feel in the program norms, the better the chance that everyone follows them!
Norms activity
Creating norms together may be the first collaborative activity for your Minecraft Student Ambassadors. It will help them feel valued and empowered, while making sure that everyone has a clear understanding of expectations. It's a good idea to review the program norms at the beginning of every MSA program meeting or event.
Supplies
- Face to face: Chart paper, sticky notes, pens/pencils.
- Virtual/hybrid: MSA OneNote
First, discuss the importance of having a shared set of rules that everyone creates together. This is an important opportunity to integrate social emotional learning (SEL). Next, collaboratively create the norms together as a whole group.
Discussion: Option 1
You can begin the discussion with an example, like respect. Ask students, “Why is it important to be respectful in Minecraft?” or “What are ways that we can show respect while we're playing Minecraft together?” Front-loading with questions is especially useful with younger students and can help you guide the conversation.
Discussion: Option 2
Step 1: Ask each student to think of the best group they've been in and write down what made it so great for them.
Step 2: Instruct students to be as specific as possible about their reasons and to provide examples if they can.
Step 3: Have a whole group discussion where students share why this previous experience was such a good one, even if there were struggles along the way.
Step 4: Next ask participants to look back at their worst experiences working in groups in the past. Direct them to focus on things that should have gone differently or problems that could have been prevented or should have been addressed.
Whole group collaborative norms creation
Now it's time to collaboratively create the norms as a group:
- Face to face: Record the rules on chart paper. For older students, you can give each student several sticky notes and a pen to record their suggested rules. Vote on the final version of the rules.
- Virtual: Create a brainstorming page in your MSA OneNote. Vote on the final version of the rules
Small groups discussion option
You can do the same activities but begin with small group discussion first. Then bring everyone back together as a whole group to create the final set of norms.
Example norms
After your MSAs collaboratively create their norms, make sure the norms are captured on a visual, like a poster. You can even have your students recreate the norms in a Minecraft world. A visual is a great way to remind everyone of the norms – and will also help hold students accountable and be an easy reference if students forget the rules. If things go awry, you can point to your poster and conduct a mini-class session toward the expectations that need attention. It's powerful to be able to refer to the expectations and remind students they were involved in the creation of them.
