Avatar Maker · Lesson 4
Lesson 4: Hero's Journey
Students reflect on their growth across the Data Adventure and tell their experience as a Hero's Journey story — in paper or digital form — connecting it to the Data Habits of Mind, data skills, and their STEM identity.
Overview
Students reflect on their growth during the Data Adventure, communicate their learning through various modes, and connect their experiences to the Data Habits of Mind, data literacy practices, and STEM identity by choosing an expression format that matches their interests and preferences.
Student Objectives
I can…
- ✓ I can communicate how I used Data Habits of Mind (e.g., curiosity, understanding context, communication) this week.
- ✓ I can identify and describe at least one data skill or practice I engaged in (e.g., describing a distribution, using a measure of center, or visualizing data).
- ✓ I can share how my confidence, experience, or enjoyment in working with data, math, or science has changed.
- ✓ I can express my learning journey in a format that suits my strengths.
At a Glance
Total: 45 minutes| Section | Time | Slides | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome & Grounding | 5 min | 2–4 | A warm-up that gives students individual time to reflect over the week's learning. |
| Agenda & Classroom Agreements | 2 min | 6–7 | Review the agenda, classroom agreements, and the objectives for the day. |
| Learn About the Hero's Journey & Storytelling | 8 min | 8–10 | Students watch a short video describing the Hero's Journey storytelling framework, then are briefly reminded of the four parts of a plot and the goal of today's work. |
| Activity: Create Our Hero's Journey | 25 min | 11–12 | Review the criteria for success for the story (slide 11) and that students work in pairs. Pairs create their own Hero's Journey story about this week's Data Adventure, choosing between writing it on the Planning Sheet or documenting it digitally as a slideshow (slide 12) — both versions share the same prompts and sentence starters. Circulate and help students connect their story to describing data (range, mean, median, mode), data representations (bar chart, dot plot, histogram, heat map, frequency table), and the Data Habits of Mind (communication, curiosity, persistence, understanding context). |
| Reflection & Closing Ritual | 5 min | 13–14 | If time allows, students share their stories with another group. |
Materials & Prep
- Hero's Journey Planning Sheet · 1 per 2–3 students (if you have students work on paper first)
Gather
- Assorted paper and colored pencilsFor students who choose to continue working analog.
- Data Habits of Mind trackerFrom Lesson 2.
Digital
- Hero's Journey Digital (student handout)Avatar Maker student handout for pairs creating their story as a digital slideshow. Have the link available for students.
Before You Teach
- ☐Decide how students will create the Hero's Journey, or whether you'll give them a choice — e.g., draft on paper first then move to the digital slideshow, or have some pairs work digitally while others work analog on the paper handout.
Open slide deck to project launches the fullscreen slideshow in a new tab. Open with speaker notes opens the deck in Google Slides with the speaker-notes pane below each slide — read these to prep, or open presenter view while projecting. The preview above is just a quick look.