Festival Maker · Lesson 3
Lesson 3: Playlists & Loot
Students continue gameplay in Symphonia, using tempo and loudness data to activate creatures, build evidence-based playlists, and collect loot for festival design.
Overview
Students continue gameplay in the world of Symphonia, refining their understanding of how tempo and loudness affect creatures. They collect and analyze data, build playlists based on evidence, and gather loot that will be used in festival design.
Student Objectives
I can…
- ✓ I can use tempo and loudness data to decide which songs activate creatures.
- ✓ I can record accurate data during gameplay.
- ✓ I can build and revise playlists based on evidence.
- ✓ I can collect loot to use in festival design.
- ✓ I can reflect on how data informs decisions.
At a Glance
Total: about 45 minutes| Section | Time | Slides | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome & Grounding | 2 min | 2–4 | Play music as students enter and display the "Think" slide. Have students reflect silently on Day 2, then invite volunteers to share. |
| Connector | 4 min | 5 | Students view a collection of album art images and choose the one that best matches how they feel today. They share their choice and reasoning with a partner or small group, or reflect quietly on their own. |
| Review Visual Agenda & Agreements | 2 min | 6–7 | Review "Today's Adventure" and the classroom agreements, reinforcing expectations for teamwork, clarifying how students should handle challenges and confusing moments during gameplay. |
| Pulling Up Data from Yesterday | 5 min | 8 | Teams load their saved playlist. The Data DJ opens dataadventures.org/festival/app, clicks the "Have a saved playlist…" button, and enters their code. There is an autosave, so students do not need to save again. Once every team has their playlist loaded, move on. If a team can't remember their code, look it up by name at dataadventures.org/teachers/playlists — a teacher page that lists every saved playlist. |
| Completing Challenges & Gathering Loot | 7 min | 9–13 | Introduce the Challenge — one per region, required to move forward. Teams fill in the answers together and bring them to you to be checked; give feedback from the answer sheets. Then explain Loot — each creature card shows how much loot it carries (the Chorus of Commons totals 7 pieces, visible on the playlist's data table on the website). Release teams to complete the Chorus of Commons challenge and collect its loot. |
| Team Play & Data Tracking | 20 min | 14–15 | Teams repeat yesterday's full loop — graphing, matching, building the playlist, completing the challenge, and gathering loot — for the Backbeat and the Forge of Form regions. Circulate, supporting graph-based decisions and accurate data entry. |
| Reflection & Closing Ritual | 5 min | 16–17 | 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" — a short calming/reset routine. |
Materials & Prep
- Challenge sheets · One copy per group of three.
Gather
- Data Habits of Mind TrackerCarried over from Avatar Maker. Used in the closing reflection.
- Creature cards
- Song sheets
- Graphing mat
- Translucent range windows
- Team role cards
- Dry- or wet-erase markers
- Region-specific lootWith table tents (page 1). Set up as a color-coded loot buffet.
- Projector
- Headphones1 per group.
- Optional supportsNoise-reducing headphones, pause cards, sentence frames, multilingual vocabulary cards, visual reference posters, and a sensory guide.
Digital
- Facilitation Slide Deck — Day 3
- Festival Maker app — dataadventures.org/festival/appEach group needs one computer with sound, headphones, and internet access.
- Teacher tool — look up saved playlistsTeacher-facing (don't share with students). If a team forgets their playlist name/code, search saved playlists here.
Before You Teach
- ☐Set up activity materials at each table for gameplay.
- ☐Set up the color-coded loot buffet for the region-specific loot.
- ☐Ensure team roles are assigned or reviewed.
- ☐Cue music for arrival.
- ☐Display the visual agenda and sensory guide.
- ☐Review the Challenges and their answers so you are ready to give feedback to groups.
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.