The Wru Education Department endeavours to support all key stakeholders within schools in Wales by providing rich, curriculum focussed resources to ignite imagination, creativity and problem solving skills, those also fundamental to play the game.
The WRU’s key responsibilities for education in Wales are to stimulate, engage and enrich the lives of children and young people to build lifelong connections to the WRU, to enable rugby to thrive.
The Welsh Rugby Union has joined forces with Minecraft: Education Edition and Hwb, the Welsh Government’s digital platform for learning and teaching to deliver ‘The Club of the Future Challenge’ which includes a virtual tour of Principality Stadium.
This unique competition is open to all maintained schools across Wales and is part of an exciting partnership to use rugby and the digital gaming platform – Minecraft: Education Edition to enhance learning and engagement within the classroom in line with the curriculum for Wales.
Launched into schools, this competition will give learners across Wales the chance to design and build their own virtual club of the future within Minecraft: Education Edition. Learners will get a virtual tour of the iconic home of Welsh Rugby, Principality Stadium as never seen before – within the world of Minecraft: Education Edition! The competition will be open to learners from the ages of 5 to 18, with local and regional rounds before the finals.
Entering the world of Minecraft: Education Edition, learners will be able to explore key areas and spaces within a virtual Principality Stadium, meeting NPCs (Non Player Characters) along the way who will reveal information about that particular area of the building. It’s at this point, that learners and teachers have the opportunity to download further information, including facts, figures and visual materials such as behind the scenes imagery and videos from the WRU on various aspects of Welsh rugby.
Information gathered from the stadium tour and the subsequent tasks delivered in the classroom are geared up to challenge what each learner’s ‘Club of the Future’ might contain.
The areas covered may include inclusion and diversity, sustainability, environmental impacts and financial literacy. Learners have been encouraged to consider their local community, research and explore the needs in their local areas to then start to develop a plan for a ‘rugby club of the future’. Rugby clubs are often the heart of local communities, so learners will learn about the values of rugby and how this can be used to provide everyone with a positive experience and contribute to the long-term health and wellbeing of society in Wales. From the plan, learners will then begin to bring their own vision for a club of the future to life within Minecraft: Education Edition.
This project has been developed by Hwb and the WRU to ensure that a wide range of curriculum links to the six Areas of Learning and Experience and Cross Cutting Themes are met.
Rugby is the fabric of our nation, being actively present in everyday life, physically, socially and culturally. The WRU/Minecraft Esports Leagues can further enhance the development of the core skills considered to be fundamental in Rugby, but within a classroom setting.
Teachers have gamers in their classrooms. Using Minecraft Education for Esports is the perfect platform to introduce inclusive, purposeful, and incredibly fun Esports activities and club programs that will build skills, content mastery, community, leadership and true engagement for all classrooms and schools.
WRU/ Esports Cymru provides a further opportunity to appeal to a wider learner audience, which will further extend the WRU’s digital educational offering, encompassing the new Curriculum in Wales in all its educational content, ensuring initiatives align with those delivered in all classrooms across Wales.