CHIMACUM — The sixth grade science classroom sounded like a playground as students cheered, laughed and competed with each other while playing the video game Minecraft.
An eSports club in Chimacum is using the video game to encourage elementary students to practice teamwork and problem-solving skills while also letting them play with other students on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Chimacum Elementary School Minecraft eSports Club met Friday morning to play both against each other and a team in the United Kingdom in various mini-games within the game.
“I get to play games with my friends,” said sixth grade student Tyler Martin. “It’s different…it’s a lot more fun.”
The club was organized by sixth grade science teacher Al Gonzalez, who was inspired by the high school’s competitive eSports team program, and since the school already had an educational version of Minecraft, it was easy for the club to form and have their first meeting on Feb. 3, Gonzalez said.
“When I found out that Minecraft was also an eSport game, I knew that I could offer that to our sixth graders,” Gonzalez said.
The game allows the students to learn how to work as a team.
“They’re communicating. … Even the students say that teamwork is very easy and very important to do,” Gonzalez said.
“I think they’re just enjoying working together and building something cool.”
While there is a competitive league for middle school Minecraft players, this club meets in the mornings on Mondays and Fridays in Gonzalez’s classroom, and there are no other teams playing at that time for them to be able to have the minimum number of matches to be considered competitive, Gonzalez said.
“Basically we’re just playing for fun,” Gonzalez said.
The team meets in the morning due to the bus schedule, so that all the students can get to and from school without having to arrange for different transportation, Gonzalez said.
Chimacum sixth-grade students Ethan Self, foreground, and Tyler Martin play the video game Minecraft against other club members and members of a United Kingdom team during a Chimacum Elementary School Minecraft eSports Club morning session. (Zach Jablonski/Peninsula Daily News)
There are 24 students part of the club and all were in attendance on Friday, with a little more than half playing on a girls-verses-boys version of Capture the Flag (the flag was replaced with Wool) and each team had 30 minutes to build a fortress to protect their wool before they could start attacking the other team’s base.
The time limit for the club ended before the either team was successful in capturing the other teams’ wool.
The lead up to the face-off is nerve racking for some of the students.
“The hardest part is the nervousness of getting everything set up beforehand,” student Penina Vailodo said. “Teamwork is very important. We have to have teamwork and not argue and get distracted to be successful.”
The other students played a handful of different free-for-all games against the UK students.
Ethan Self was playing with the UK players, and while the school games have a problem with latency — the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer — due to so many students using the WiFi at once, he enjoys playing with his fellow students and with the UK students.
“You have to have a pretty good plan because it’s challenging,” Self said regarding competing with other students. “It’s different and that’s why it’s fun.”
In addition to playing, Gonzalez has students live streaming the club events on his Twitch account, educatorAl, and then saves them to his YouTube for the club’s record.
“ESports has announcers just like physical sports do, so I like to give the kids a chance to try out their talents,” Gonzalez said.
The plan for the coming weeks is for the club to start “world build,” which will allow the students to work together to build structures, castles, forests, caves, whatever they can imagine and can use those maps for continued gaming, Gonzalez said.
The best part of the club, Gonzalez believes, is the high interest of the students.
“It’s seeing this, the kids are engaged 100 percent,” Gonzalez said. “It just runs the gambit of exciting emotion and as a teacher, I don’t see this level of excitement while they’re doing science very much.”
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Jefferson County reporter Zach Jablonski can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 5, or at zjablonski@peninsuladailynews.com.