Data Adventures

Festival Maker · Lesson 1

Lesson 1: Welcome to Symphonia

Students enter the world of Symphonia to explore how music, creatures, and data connect, learning how the game works and beginning to use the Data Habits of Mind.

Class time

about 45 minutes

Lesson

Lesson 1 of 5

Adventure

Festival Maker

Overview

Students enter the world of Symphonia to explore how music, creatures, and data connect. They learn how the game works, interact with key materials, and begin using data habits that will guide gameplay, data collection, and future festival design.

Student Objectives

I can…

  • ✓ I can describe how the game works.
  • ✓ I can identify materials and explain the data they show.
  • ✓ I can use graphing tools to organize and label data.
  • ✓ I can identify how I used the Data Habits of Mind.
  • ✓ I can explain that gameplay will include collecting data and loot for future festival design.

At a Glance

Total: about 45 minutes
Section Time Slides What happens
Welcome & Grounding 5 min 2–7 Introduce the Data Adventure and orient students to their place within the three adventures, then give an overview of the five lessons and today's focus — the tools, mechanics, and Data Habits of Mind. Bring up the "Think" slide and play music as students enter, inviting them to notice how the music makes them feel.
Connector 4 min 8–16 Project 2–3 "Would You Rather: Music Edition" slides. Students respond by speaking, pointing, or holding up one finger (option 1) or two fingers (option 2). End with "Fast vs. slow" and "Loud vs. quiet."
Review Visual Agenda & Create Agreements 2 min 17–18 Review the "Today's Adventure" slide. Co-create classroom agreements or review premade ones, focusing on what supports safety, inclusion, and participation. Connect the agreements to the upcoming group work.
Station Rotation 25 min 19–21 Small groups rotate through four stations — 3 minutes to explore and respond to the table tent questions, 1 minute to rotate. Students interact with creature cards, song sheets, graphing tools, and data habits, noticing how music data connects to decisions in the game. Close with a whole-group share-out where each group shares one discovery. Record key vocabulary on chart paper and reinforce it during discussion: data, tempo, loudness, graph, Data Habits of Mind, curiosity, context, communication, perseverance.
The Story of Festival Maker 5 min 22 Before viewing, ask students to notice connections to the stations. Show "The Story of Festival Maker" video, then share connections and observations about music, data, and decision-making. Reinforce that gameplay will include collecting data and loot for future festival design.
Reflection & Closing Ritual 4 min 23–24 Students make a connection to one Data Habit of Mind and record it in the Data Habits of Mind Tracker. Guide students through a brief "Creature Reset" calming routine.

Materials & Prep

Print

  • No additional pages to print for this lesson.

Gather

  • Data Habits of Mind Tracker
    Carried over from Avatar Maker. Used in the closing reflection.
  • Station 1 — Card Discovery materials
    Music Station table tent (page 1), Station Rotation Cards, and a Song Sheet. Provided by the project.
  • Station 2 — Website Wonder materials
    Website Wonder table tent (page 2) and a computer or tablet connected to dataadventures.org/festival/app. Provided by the project.
  • Station 3 — Graphing Mat & Translucent Range Windows materials
    Graphing Mat and Tools table tent (page 3), laminated Graphing Mat, translucent range windows, and red and black markers. Provided by the project.
  • Station 4 — Data Habits materials
    Data Habits of Mind table tent (page 4) and Data Habits of Mind cards. Provided by the project.
  • Projector
  • Headphones
    For students to listen to songs.
  • Optional supports
    Noise-reducing headphones, pause cards, sentence frames, multilingual vocabulary cards, visual reference posters, and a sensory guide.

Digital

Before You Teach

  • ☐Decide whether students will co-create agreements or use the premade agreements in the slides, and hide unused agreement slides before teaching.
  • ☐Choose 2–3 artist preference slides in advance for the Would You Rather activity, and hide facilitator-only slides before presenting.
  • ☐Place one table tent at each station and set out the station materials.
  • ☐Open and test the Festival Maker video for sound and internet.
  • ☐Display the visual agenda (and Sensory Guide if using it) and cue music for arrival.

Slide Deck

Open slide deck to project Open with speaker notes

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.