Minecraft Build Challenges: Cleverlike Provides Your Recipe for Scholastic Esports Success

Minecraft Education has long been a favorite tool for engaging students through play, creativity, and collaboration. Cleverlike has developed a system to take student excitement for Minecraft to the next level by providing a structured curriculum for coaches and teachers who want to launch a scholastic esports program featuring build challenges using Minecraft. Instead of simply offering rules and gameplay, our program provides a step-by-step, day-by-day “recipe for success” that helps educators guide students toward growth, confidence, and competition.

Why Build Challenges?

As educators, we’re always striving to get our students fully engaged in class material. Cleverlike helps you bring Minecraft into the mix, inspiring students to dig deeper, explore details, and creatively demonstrate what they’re learning. 

Minecraft is a great title to use because it's a familiar digital environment for students. A lot of them already have plenty of game knowledge that they're excited to run with and to apply.

The key is to not just have students playing Minecraft, but to direct their game time to structured learning and skill development. If you’re not a Minecraft expert (or even if you are!), you can tap into the knowledge and expertise of our Cleverlike team by implementing our Build Challenges, which give both students and coaches a clear path forward.

Each session offers fun, scaffolded activities that build essential skills in teamwork, creativity, time management, and presentation. Students begin with simple build challenges: 

• Outline the learning objective and provide a non-competitive prompt

• Each team researches the information and establishes a plan 

• Teams use Minecraft to construct something to meet your specification or theme

• Teams learn to organize roles, manage a clock, and present their work

After several asynchronous sessions, you might be ready to run a build battle for your students. These are competitive events where two or more teams complete challenges simultaneously and are judged against each other. This progression transforms casual Minecraft play into structured scholastic esports.

How the Curriculum Works

Build challenges are designed for 15 one-hour sessions, though schools can adapt them to longer or shorter blocks. Each lesson can include multiple activities, such as:

• Guided gameplay tasks

• Reflection exercises (e.g., creating a team code of conduct)

• Creative builds with increasing complexity

• Learning to use tools for presentation and documentation

What a Challenge Looks Like

Many topics lend themselves to this build challenge structure. We’ve helped many educators implement challenges related to the Sustainable Development Goals. This could include agriculture, urban development, or topics relevant to your local community. A prompt might be to design a school of the future, incorporating how and why AI might be used and applied.

The students would discuss ideas that could include elements like:

• Should there be computers? Purpose? How many? Where?

• What about virtual reality?

• Should there be an open space or something for more human interaction?

• Are there playgrounds? 

  
  

Once the team has a brainstorm session and outlines what they want to incorporate, and confirm that it meets the rubric, they prepare to build. The teams will make decisions for bringing their idea into Minecraft, including division of roles for research, design, and building, as well as how they’ll deliver the build to the judges so it’s clear that the build supports the answering of the prompt. Through the challenge, they will learn how to work collaboratively towards a common goal. 

Another example could be to design a Venice-inspired Minecraft world where students explore architecture and furniture design. Using Minecraft Education’s camera and portfolio tools, they capture images, annotate them, and submit their work as a PDF. This teaches not only in-game creativity but also transferable skills in research, documentation, and presentation.

This integration ensures that build challenges are not just fun games but also meaningful, project-based learning experiences aligned with classroom content.

Settings for Implementation

The program works well in multiple settings:

• After-school programs: A natural fit, especially in states like California where expanded learning programs are tied to attendance.

• STEM electives or gifted/talented programs: Build challenges can be woven into existing curriculum.

• Homeschool environments: Flexible structure makes it suitable for independent study.

  
  

Tools and Delivery

The lessons are delivered through Cleverlike.School, which features support for Microsoft and Google single sign-on, direct logins, and even anonymous access. The program is accessible on all devices—Chromebooks, iPads, PCs, and Macs.  Each coach receives full access to the season’s content for $299 per season.

Coaches also have the opportunity to earn a Cleverlike credential by documenting their implementation. This certification requires reflection, evidence of student work, and proof of consistent program delivery—making it more rigorous than simple “click-through” certificates.

Why It Matters

This structured approach provides a clear “recipe for success” in implementing Minecraft build battles for inclusive, nonviolent scholastic esports. By tying into academic content and providing a clear coach roadmap, the program helps schools use Minecraft as more than just a game. It becomes a launchpad for creativity, teamwork, and future-ready skills.

Connect with our team to get some build challenges cooking! Cleverlike leaders are certified Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts, globally recognized educators who use Microsoft tools like Minecraft to innovate teaching and learning. Schedule some time to brainstorm a plan for your build challenges today!