Hour of Code

Excited students try their hands at coding. Every Lower School student participated in the Hour of Code!

On December 9th, the entire Francis Parker School engaged in an "Hour of Code" - a national movement to raise awareness of coding and to garner student interest in coding related activities and educational pursuits. While our Middle and Upper School students tackled projects and introductions to coding, our Lower School students almost felt like it was just another day as they had been actively engaging in coding for the better part of a month. The purpose of the Hour of Code at Parker was to help students who had not previously experienced coding get some hands-on experience, and for those who had experience, they were given a chance to show off their work to their peers. 

All students also got exposure to the idea that coding drives many things in their lives - be it video games, or particular online activities, engineering, or even fashion design. 

All in all, it was a fun day that engaged our students. It was clear that they all enjoyed the coding activities, as well as the opportunity to solve a variety of puzzles that had their origins in coding. 

The San Diego Maker Faire: SUCCESS!!! and 5th grade explorers project

When we were presented with the idea of going to the STEAM maker fair in December, there was a mix of hesitation and excitement. Ultimately we wanted to share our experiences with the educational and Design Thinking community to continue to grow and develop as a program. We thought the best way to represent exactly what it is we do here at Francis Parker Lower school was to provide those visiting our booth an opportunity to “walk through” a design thinking project as an active participant. We wanted to show how each step of the Design Thinking process had a well designed project element that was directly associated with our Design Thinking model here at Parker.

    To achieve this we chose the fifth grade boat project, which involves students learning the fundamentals about boat design and buoyancy along with supporting the classroom’s social studies curriculum. In the classroom, students built boats out of cardboard, tinfoil and tape followed by measuring the amount of weight each boat could hold. After the first couple of iterations, students brought those experiences to the design lab where they worked with a partner to create a final boat design. Students brainstormed different designs on paper and discussed the benefits of the different designs before having access to materials. Once the final boat design was decided upon, students worked together to create their boats which were again tested with different amounts of weights but were also put up against a variety of hazards such as wind, rain, and waves. This was done in a 12 by 4 foot pool made out of old garden boxes and a large tarp along with a drill rigged up to a pulley system that pulled each boat across at a standardized speed.

    As boats were being designed, created, and tested, students were also creating Sea Monster paintings in Art, studying buoyancy in science, and continuing to study the age of exploration in the classroom. It is in these interdisciplinary experiences, lasting memories in students are made and the learning experiences become much more meaningful. As you entered our booth at the maker fair, you were immediately presented with the challenge we presented to the kids, along with the opportunity to design and create your own boat using the same materials and even test the boat in our pool of water. There were examples of students art work along with a video of students testing their boats with different weights and different hazards thrown their way. Lastly, as we do everyday in the Design Lab at Parker, we asked participants to reflect upon the experience and record some of those thoughts on a provided poster board. The turnout was great and the feedback provided to us was equally as rewarding. Students, parents, and teachers who visited our booth that day were engaged and excited to walk through the Design Thinking process we use here at Parker everyday. 

Importance of Reflection in Design Thinking Learning

One of the big benefits that we have seen by integrating design thinking into our curriculum is the way in which it breaks down the thinking, creating, reflecting, refining and sharing process. As you know from prior posts, we designed our own Parker Design Thinking process. We spent a large part of our year last year ingraining this with our faculty and students. This year our focus has been to bring this process to life as we work with students to tackle integrated design thinking projects.

One of the major components of this is reflection. Theorists from Piaget to Vygotsky to Bandura have all advocated the benefits of metacognitive strategy use with students of all ages. The more students reflect on their learning and the process of learning, the more they build confidence in their capability to achieve realistic goals in subsequent projects. This is commonly known as the self-regulatory, self-efficacy cycle. When students can self-regulate (e.g., they know how to monitor their progress and adjust goals and deadlines) they become more confident in their ability which leads to increased self-efficacy (e.g., they know they can do it). Additional benefits of being able to capably manage time and articulate needed steps also arise from using structured reflection.

We are using reflection in a variety of ways within the Scripps Design Center and in our design thinking project. Sometimes it is written, sometimes it is full group, sometimes it is individual, sometimes it happens in small groups. Sometimes we orient on a specific skill or problem, while other times we speak to more generalized issues that are presenting themselves. We try very hard to adapt to the situation and where our students are in their work.

This year we are intentionally focusing kids on reflecting on their process and skill development in addition to content learning. We've tackled this in a few ways. One way we have done this is to use our design thinking process to help kids with reflecting. Below you see some great examples of how we formalized the reflection component following the completion of a project. Students articulated their work using the steps.

Each step of the Parker Design Process is articulated vis-a-vis a specific project by students. 

We often use this reflection as a way to evaluate what students got out of the day's lesson as well as to help us determine where we need to go with subsequent sessions - in other words, this has become a powerful formative assessment cycle for both kids and faculty.

A huge HUGE win is that while we (faculty) guided these reflection sessions initially, students are now leading the charge. In the photo below, you see a student up front guiding her peers through a reflection on a lesson in which they had built squishy circuits. We are now seeing classroom teachers tapping this student skill in the general classrooms as well, which is very awesome to see.

A student leads her peers in reflecting on what was accomplished in class, as well as talking about next steps. 

5th Grade Project: Survivor Project

Survivor project: we did this project last year (see earlier blog post near the start of this blog).

Survival project is five years old, and it started as a PBL activity. Empathy is the biggest change in this project and as we have reworked it we have moved more towards getting kids to really live and understand the challenges inherent in early peoples. Kids have appreciation and understanding of early peoples, and that's what we really wanted them to get. Cooperation v conflict piece. Having them do things in authentic ways where learning is real. Tying in common threads all the way through curriculum to the design center. Tie ins to the books they read, etc.

Students build shelters and basic hunting weapons as part of this unit of study. The biggest difference from last year is that we did a two day build on shelters instead of just one day. This way students could plan it out more and also see if their shelters could stand up overnight. Making fire was not a part of the build this time around. We added in making water vessels and spear making/throwing (tool making) this year as it was a better use of time and also more student-friendly (could be tested indoors or outdoors). Materials for structures were more standardized to be more even for all teams.

This time around we had students do open ended research and then use their social studies book to get more specific info about their region. We also had a parent come in this year to talk with students - they are a survivalist, teaches Marines on survival techniques, and it was intense. Kids learned a lot from him and they enjoyed that lesson immensely.

Bottom line? Kids love this project! They made spears and got to throw them at a box. The tool making was the best part of this for the kids. Better appreciation for the fact that it is difficult to make things and live with primitive tools. They see how hard it is to "hunt" so they end up realizing berry picking. Of 60 kids only 4 had successful spear building (spear stuck in the box). The difficulties of making work-able solutions with basic materials was a BIG realization for kids. Great learning!

Reflection:
Next year - start bringing in materials at the start of school so that we have enough materials for all teams. We need to make a stronger curriculum tie in: how does geography and climate affect culture and housing for people. They are learning about different regions, etc.

4th Grade: Skill Building Mini Lessons

As the school year began, we wanted to not only directly teach specific elements of the Design Thinking process but also intentionally develop associated skills that would allow students to more effectively engage with the our Design Thinking Model here at Parker. Some of those associated skills include: Collaboration and Effective Communication skills along with developing empathy as it is the primary driver of Design Thinking. We intentionally develop these skills because it is those skills that will allow students to more effectively use the design thinking process to solve various problems and challenges presented to them in the variety of disciplines throughout their school year.

    The use of mini lessons to teach these skills and concepts can be viewed as building blocks, strengthening the students abilities to apply this knowledge in a variety of ways. One of our first mini lessons involved students practicing collaborative and effective communication skills by working in small groups to solve a problem presented to them with a variety of constraints and boundaries. Students were asked to build bridges from one of our classroom workbenches to another workbench. During this one-hour work period, students were given time limits on brainstorming periods, designing periods, and building periods. To highlight the importance of having a well designed plan and staying focused even in difficult or stressful situations we periodically presented distractions such as playing music or implementing a “no-talking period” which allowed for some very insightful reflections at the conclusion of the design challenge.

We used another mini lesson used to directly teach empathy, which involved students again working in groups, using their newly acquired collaboration and communication skills to build products based on the needs of other students. Each group was first asked to write a short description of a product without specifically naming the product that would help meet a need of the group. The groups were then given 10-15 minutes at each table where they read over other groups descriptions and built a product based on the needs of the other groups. Each group placed their product in a box and moved onto the next groups description. By the end of the work period, each group had three products in their box, made by other groups based on the short description they earlier wrote. As each group opened their box, they noticed that some of products were similar and some were very different. This allowed for students to discuss why they made their product in that specific way based on descriptions provided while also highlighting that people view things in different ways and that to show empathy you must be able to view things from the perspective of others. Each group then selected the product that best met their need and the winning group was able to explain how they came to that design. The biggest take away for the students based on their reflections was that the most successful groups in this mini lesson were those that were able to think like the other groups, viewing the need from anothers perspective and showing empathy.

Design Thinking? I've got a book for that!

When you ask a children's librarian to contribute to a blog, chances are you are going to get a story.  Well, today is no exception.  You are going to get several, in fact.  In the library, there are very few opportunities for students to engage in a complete Design Thinking activity, so we use literature to teach mini lessons highlighting the various elements of the Design Thinking process.  These stories show great examples of the "design, create, test" loop, offer opportunities to teach brainstorming techniques,  show the importance of empathy in the design process, and highlight the importance of collaboration and persistence.  Most importantly, however, they are all excellent and engaging read aloud stories that exemplify the Design Thinking process in a kid friendly way.

Here are some of my favorites...

 Queen Victoria's Bathing Machine by Gloria Wheelan

Poor Queen Victoria! She loves to swim, but can't quite figure out how to get to the water without her devoted subjects glimpsing her swimming suit. (Because, of course, such a sight would compromise her regal dignity.) Fortunately for the water-loving monarch, it's Prince Albert to the rescue with an invention fit for a queen! 

What Floats in a Moat?  by Lynne Berry

Archie the Goat has a delivery to make. He has several barrels of buttermilk that the queen needs, but in order to get them to her, he needs to cross the moat.  Testing several different theories to find out what will float and what will sink, Archie and his friend Skinny the Hen don't succeed at first, but they do try, try, try again (and again). And with reason and persistence, they'll get that buttermilk where it needs to be!

Spic-and-Span!  Lillian Gilbreth's Wonder Kitchen by Monica Kulling 

Born into a life of privilege in 1878, Lillian Moller Gilbreth put her pampered life aside for one of adventure and challenge. She and her husband, Frank, became efficiency experts by studying the actions of factory workers. They ran their home efficiently, too. When Frank suddenly died, Lillian was left to her own devices to raise their eleven children. Eventually, she was hired by the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company to improve kitchen design, which was only the beginning.

Pop!  The invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy 

Gum. It's been around for centuries—from the ancient Greeks to the American Indians, everyone's chewed it. But the best kind of gum—bubble gum!—wasn't invented until 1928, when an enterprising young accountant at Fleer Gum and Candy used his spare time to experiment with different recipes.

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires 

A little girl has a wonderful idea. With the help of her canine assistant, she is going to make the most magnificent thing! She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work. But making the most magnificent thing turns out to be harder than she thinks. 

Twenty-Two Cents : Muhammad Yunus and the Village Bank by Paula Yoo

A biography of Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who from a young age was determined to make difference in the world and eventually revolutionized global antipoverty efforts by developing the innovative economic concept of micro-lending.

What Do You Do With An Idea? by Kobi Yamada

This is the story of one brilliant idea and the child who helps bring it into the world

 Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty

Rosie may seem quiet during the day, but at night she's a brilliant inventor of gizmos and gadgets who dreams of becoming a great engineer. When her great-great-aunt Rose (Rosie the Riveter) comes for a visit and mentions her one unfinished goal--to fly--Rosie sets to work building a contraption to make her aunt's dream come true. But when her contraption doesn't fly but rather hovers for a moment and then crashes, Rosie deems the invention a failure. On the contrary, Aunt Rose insists that Rosie's contraption was a raging success: you can only truly fail, she explains, if you quit. 

3rd Grade: Blending Skill with Innovation

Design Thinking vs. Basic Woodworking skills...which should we do?  Both!  

While directly teaching the Design Thinking process is one of our main goals, it is equally important to develop the skills needed to interact and engage with our Design Lab tools in a safe and appropriate way. Francis Parker 3rd graders started off the year by with the skill building challenge of creating an iPad holder.   Students learned to cut notches in small hard-board pieces using a provided template and a coping saw to create a desktop iPad holder for use in the classroom (making this project very popular with the classroom teachers!).

 

After the students have used their iPad holder for a couple of months, we will circle back and have students take another look at their design, how it is used, and how it could be improved to better meet their needs.  To directly develop empathetic skills in these students, we will ask them to interview another student, attempting to better understand the others perspective and individual needs.  The students will then take that information and continue along the Design Thinking process, brainstorming improvements to the holder, and designing and creating a improved iPad holder that will better meet the needs of their partner.  
   
 We are using this seemingly small, introductory  project to not only develop fundamental skills needed to effectively and safely engage with the design center and its many tools, but also to directly teach the Design Thinking process and help the students develop empathy and effective communication. Win-Win!

We can't wait to see what they come up with!

Transformation: The Scripps Design Center

At the end of year one, we learned a lot of things from our dabbling in Design Thinking, but a primary concern that surfaced was related to space. A regular problem had arisen: kids would be elbow deep in an exciting project only to discover that they would need a particular material only found in another location on campus. To get this material, they had to head all the way to the other end of campus to get it, and would sometimes go on extended tours in this process. We realized that it was going to be critical to have teaching spaces that were design oriented needed be located in a common area. This area could not be too far removed from the general classrooms to save on travel time as well as to afford greater integration of projects with learning. 

We had a space that was set aside for large meetings and other school functions, but typically was not heavily used during the school day. After a lot of discussion and meetings, the decision was made to relocate our wood shop and art room to another part of campus, and to house them next to one another as well as positioning them next to our science classrooms and library. This would afford us the ability to physically de-silo the specials classes in which design thinking projects would take place. It also helped with students being able to easily access materials and teachers when working on projects. 

Happily, new flooring and electric were only real construction elements that we had to consider. This resulted in minimal costs that we were able to take from annual capital improvement. This was a deliberate consideration - we weren't sure what the kids would need, so we put things in place that we knew we would use, and then build from there based on the projects that came to life during the year. We took what we had from other parts of the school to encompass both functions (technology and woodworking/fabrication shop) that we needed in the space.

We had a small handful of teachers willingly relocate their classroom space to accomplish this - and the results have been outstanding... 

This relocation of spaces has completely transformed the way we teach. It also honors what we promised to do from the outset, which is to build a lab that would meet the emergent needs that came about as a result of dabbling in Design Thinking in year one. This process held us true to our commitment to let philosophy and student outcomes drive physical space decisions and considerations. 

Our new Scripps Design Center, ready for action!

The fall semester project board shows a full docket of integrated projects in almost every grade level.

This new space has breathed new life into our design thinking projects this year, and because it is in a better adjacency to regular classrooms, it is also allowing us to bridge the gap between classroom instruction and projects in a way that proved nearly impossible last year. It has facilitated a great deal of collaboration for the design team as well as for the design team and classroom teachers. In fact, it's not unusual to see the classroom teacher dropping in to check on student progress to see how the work in the Scripps Design Center underpins and supports what they are teaching their kids in the academic classroom.

Today, we free flow through the spaces in and around the Scripps Design Center - both students and faculty. This free movement has allowed kids to expand their thinking and incorporate both engineering design and artistic considerations into whole, integrated projects. We are also seeing greater free flowing of our faculty in terms of on-the-fly collaboration and just-in-time adjustments to instructional pacing. This all serves to benefit our students by providing improved pathways to achieve what they set out to create.

Lower School Design Thinking Year 1

    

"Implementation is invitational, but learning about Design Thinking is mandatory."  This was the message as we embarked on our Design Thinking journey.  Accepting that invitation, we here at the Lower School immediately began looking for ways to implement Design Thinking.  Our initial attempts saw us doing this in three different ways.  First, the group of teachers who would become the "Design Team" started by working with small groups of students.  We lead the Student Council through a Design Thinking exercise to discover and implement a better way to track tickets at the Halloween Carnival.

Introducing the Design Thinking process

Brainstorming ways to track the tickets

Bringing their vision to life

  
Our fifth grade students then noticed that given the upcoming holiday concert season, visitors to our campus might need more information that you would find on a traditional campus map.  So we led them through the Design Thinking process to design maps featuring the best places to park, accessible ramps, and even the coldest drinking fountains!

Students interviewed the office staff and our safety patrol officer to create this map of the best places to park.

As we were doing this the team noticed that brainstorming, collaboration, and all of the other elements of design thinking weren’t innate skills for many kids and needed to be taught.  To that end the second thing we did was to begin using Design Thinking challenges to teach/model these individual skills. 

For example, in the library,  we did a mini lesson on brainstorming.  We read a story about Queen Victoria, who loved to swim but was unable to get to the beach while preserving her modesty.  

 Right before the innovation was revealed we stopped, and brainstormed our own ideas following the rules of brainstorming…

1.  Listen respectfully/let all voices be heard. 

2.  Defer judgment/there are no bad ideas.

3.  Build on the ideas of others/ use “yes, and…” statements.  

Students had some creative solutions to Queen Victoria's problem

Here are a few other examples of ways we taught the individual steps...

This engineering challenge was the perfect opportunity to teach collaborative skills

Try, try again.  Students had to come up with several iterations of a catapult.

When we think of Design Thinking, we tend to think of product innovation, but at it's core Design Thinking is a repeatable process that can be applied to any problem or challenge.  So, the third thing we did was to go into classrooms and work with teachers to show them how to "tweak" their existing lessons to reflect a more Design Thinking approach, in other words,  show them that Design Thinking is not something that you do...it is how you do it.   

Taking a lesson and making it better.  Instead of taking a test on the Social Studies chapter on transportation, students brainstorm innovations on modern transportation and then create prototypes of their inventions.

 

As we reflected on year 1, we were surprised by many things...the exponential increase in the student's engagement, how much of this we were already doing without realizing it, and just how hard it is for us as teachers to embrace ambiguity.  Our biggest realization, however, was that the two biggest obstacles to teaching in a true interdisciplinary way were time and space-specifically our class schedules and proximity of our classrooms.  

It seems we have a new Design Thinking challenge on our hands...

Coding Play Dates!

One of the things we had learned at Lighthouse Charter School was that all faculty should and could learn to code, as well as 3-D print. Throughout the early spring months, we procured some small 3-D printers and also the necessary supplies to provide coding basics for students and teachers.

While many of our faculty are comfortable with 3-D printing and the related applications to make things for printing, several had not yet had a chance to experience the magic of 3-D printing. Similarly, while some faculty were familiar with coding language and using code as an outcome of student learning, other faculty had yet to learn about this. As a result, we held a couple of "Coding Play Dates" for faculty after work hours in late April and early May. These play dates were essentially an open house for design lab related tools. We provided computers, the apps related to 3-D printing, and 3-D printers, MakeyMakey kits, and coding applications.

The play dates were a huge success! We had over 20 faculty attend each session, which means that 40  folks learned the essentials about coding and 3-D printing, as well as walking away with some great ways to use and apply these technologies in the classroom. I highly recommend that schools who are moving to a design thinking paradigm (or who are moving towards a stronger technology presence with coding and 3-D printing) use this informal, drop in, novice-friendly approach to heighten interest and provide guidance in learning.

At one of our coding dates we even had students come in to teach our faculty. That was a great touch that really motivated and interested the faculty - they saw how much the kids loved doing this kind of activity, and they walked away with some wonderful ideas on integrating coding and 3-D printing in their classrooms. As we move into the new school year, we anticipate more coding and printing taking place in our classrooms. Stay tuned!

Faculty from all three divisions tackle Scratch coding.

Colleagues help colleagues learn the essentials for 3-D printing via Tinkercad.

We used low resolution 3-D printers to quickly produce prints created by faculty members.

Here's a 3-D print ready to roll in Tinkercad.

Eureka! Success in programming a MakeyMakey kit as a drum set. 

Colleagues had fun learning coding basics and using MakeyMakey. 

5th Grade Science Fair!

In what was undoubtedly the launch point for design thinking at the Lower School in the spring of 2014, the 5th Grade Science Fair in 2015 was truly a sight to behold. This event encapsulated all of the elements of design thinking that we have embraced at Francis Parker. It was awesome!

First, it was 100% student created - all of the work was done by students during class time here on campus, and while students had consultative help from teachers and staff, they did all of the ideating, brainstorming, creating, and designing all on their own. While the final finish of these projects might not be as strong as those that involve parent help, the students owned their work and their learning in a way that would not have been possible otherwise.

During the morning of March 27, our 5th graders hosted the science fair at our Lower School campus. All students displayed their projects and were available to explain their work to parents, faculty, administration, and even their fellow students. It was truly remarkable to hear 10 year olds thoroughly explain complicated projects and processes, including hearing them discuss their iterative process and repeated testing to get a solid final product. Students also provided live demonstrations of their projects for all participants.

My favorite part of the process was that students were required to talk about successes, failures, challenges, and what they learned - not just about the project itself, but from the process of creating the project. Just behind that, my second favorite part of the event was that students from other grade levels visited the fair, and the 5th graders walked all of those students through their projects - students as teachers made for a fun morning of learning for all. Many of the poster boards that accompanied the projects included these discussions of successes and challenges. It was great to see kids realize that failing is part of succeeding, not to mention having them so professionally discuss their end results! See the photos below to get a taste of an incredible morning of teaching and learning and design thinking!

Display boards are examined by parents and faculty members. 

The science fair was a big hit for everyone! Kudos to our 5th graders.

All displays included discussions of successes and challenges - reflective learning evidence.

Here a group of students demonstrates their product in a live demo.

Another group's reflection on what worked, did not work, and what they'd do differently next time.

5th grade teams teach students from other grades - students as teachers led to powerful learning for all!

Updating Our Textbook

In 3rd grade, our students discovered that an entire chapter of their social studies textbook was woefully out of date. The wrong state governor, wrong representatives, and even wrong laws were shown as being current! Our students and teachers decided to do something about it. Enter Aurasma, a very neat app that gave a great option for students to take charge and set history straight.

Students first found all of the text and photos that needed to be updated. Then, they investigated the current and correct information that needed to be inserted. Finally, they put their iPads to use and virtually inserted the correct photos and information into the chapter using Aurasma. This app allows the students to "virtually insert" the right photos into the book. Once this process is done, the viewer can hold the iPad over the textbook and the app automatically and magically updates the photos and text when you look at the page using the iPad's camera. It is pretty amazing!

The students loved this project, and it provided an innovative and creative way for our students to learn the current office-holders in our state as well as enhance their digital learning skills. The 3rd grade teaching team shared that they had never seen their students so highly engaged in this unit of learning before. When I visited the classrooms, I was bombarded by students excitedly wanting to show off their Aurasma pages that they had created!

Chinese New Year Makey-Makey Project!

Our Lower School Chinese teacher, Sophia Dalton, was one of our faculty who had the opportunity to visit Lighthouse Charter School. During our time there, she envisioned, created, and prototyped a fun new lesson for her Chinese New Year cultural learning unit. Being brave and willing to try something completely new, she gave it a go just a few weeks later!

Final product - 100% functional. Next year: work on polishing the final display

In the past, students had studied different traditional elements of Chinese New Year, like the use of dragon dances, the eating of oranges, and the use of red envelopes for gifting money. Sophia updated this project by having the students still study the traditional elements and learn the vocabulary in the target language. Students also produced short written summaries in the target language. However, this year, they took that learning and crafted an interactive table display to teach others about Chinese New Year - not only showing off their learning, but also allowing others to learn from what they made! It ended up being a great "pay it forward" kind of experience where younger learners got to experience Chinese New Year and new target language vocabulary because of what the older students created.

Sophia shares that her kids LOVED using the Makey-Makey kits. While the lesson took a bit longer than it had in the past, she felt it was 100% worth it due to the high energy and engagement demonstrated by the students as they created the project. She shared "the project was not too overwhelming to facilitate, and I can see it could be integrated in various projects and used in our upper grades at Lower School." She went on to share that the biggest challenge was the difficulty in staying in target language due to the technical aspects involved, however, it ended up being worth it in the end.

Students having big fun working with Makey-Makey

The final product was not as polished as she wanted, but it was completely student done and engineered. Next year she is looking at ways to polish up the finished display so that it can be displayed in a public space at the school for more people to enjoy.

To quote Sophia, "WE DID IT! Bottom line: we will totally do this next year with some modifications."

The Fifth Grade Play

Our 5th grade students experienced what has likely been the most ambitious design thinking project to date! What was it? It was their grade-level play. Each 5th grade class put on their own production. 

In years past, our drama teacher had written a play for our students, and then directed the play. Students filled the roles of actors and stage technicians, with all students receiving direction on roles, duties, and responsibilities. Tasks were pre-defined and clearly explained.

This year, the approach to the 5th grade play could not have been more different, and it was truly a community affair. This time around, the drama teacher and classroom teachers made a determined effort for this to be student-centered, and they took on the role of facilitator/questioner rather than boss or director. Aside from organizing the teams that were needed to put on the production, the teachers did not overtly guide the work. The teams included script writers, researchers, actors, costume designers, prop masters, sound masters, and stage tech crew. Students self-selected into one or more of these teams to put on their production. 

The students decided the theme for their play (all three classes focused on ecology). Students wrote the script - doing all of the research necessary to fact-check their work. Students then began crafting the props and costumes with the help of specials teachers in our wood shop and art classes. Students also delved into the sound effects and music needed for their productions, with our Lower School technology coordinator acting as facilitator of their work. The technical crew led the lights, curtain, and other stage elements for the productions. Students created playbills and invitations to the production as well!

On the day of the performance, the student pride in their work was clearly evident to all who came to the event. Students approached their work with a determined but happy energy. It was incredible to watch the teachers let students take the helm of all aspects of the live performance, from the start time to introducing the production to the closing curtain. 

Students performing one of the three plays

Following the play, our drama teacher, Letty Robinson, guided the students through a live debrief of the production and the process that led students to the performance day. It was really neat to hear the students reflect on their learning, and to watch parents listen to their students discussing their learning. Students were able to clearly articulate the challenges, victories, lessons, and take-aways that their design thinking journey took them on. Even better, students referenced the specific steps of the design thinking process in their debriefing.

Parents listen in as students debrief their learning process

The teachers were so proud of their kids for all of their work, as they should be! All of the involved faculty shared how hard it was to "let go" and let the kids run with their ideas, but they also all expressed how amazing the students were in terms of working through problems and finding solutions to "make it work" in the end. The plays each had a high production value, and in the end, the involved faculty said that the productions were the best they'd seen due to the students' ownership of all aspects of production. Given that the plays had involved props, costumes, scripts, and even songs, this was no small feat.

While the efforts to pull this off were intense, and it required a lot of collaboration and flexibility among the adults in the process, the glow of happiness from our students after they took their final bow made it all worthwhile. Everyone involved feels very strongly that the net result is that our students truly "own" their knowledge about the importance of ecology, as well as the fundamental steps and processes to put on a quality stage production. Kudos to our 5th grade students!

Spanish Two: "Home of the Future" Presentations

Design thinking is beginning to pop up in all kinds of fun places, like in our foreign language classrooms! 

Our Spanish teacher, Ms. Gallardo, traditionally had her Spanish 2 students demonstrate their new understanding of house/home vocabulary by drawing their house and labeling it. This year, she decided to try a new strategy: students would use their new vocabulary to design and create an energy-saving "home of the future" and then present their ideas to their classmates!

Students were given rapid prototyping materials to transition their drawn diagrams into 3d models, which they then labeled in Spanish. Finally, as part of the test and share step, students developed a short, 3 minute presentation to introduce their classmates to their ideas, after which classmates asked questions about the design elements. 

When you look at the photos below, you can get a sense of how much fun the students had in dreaming big and creating their own "home of the future" to share. Ms. Gallardo and other adults in attendance for the presentations all shared that the students had some amazing ideas in their designs, and they were pleasantly surprised at the high level of thinking in the designs, presentations, and audience questions.

A surprise take-away from this project was that without direction, students did all of the planning and work in the target language! This was of enormous value in the students' learning process and students gained even more new vocabulary in their efforts to properly describe and create their homes of the future. 

The project combined new knowledge, core knowledge, and design thinking into a fun, three-day event for students. This was the same amount of time kids had done the previous house drawing, but the level of output from the students was much improved with the integration of design thinking. 

Here's several groups of students sharing their models:

CAIS Presentation

In early March, Parker Thomas joined me in Oakland so that we might share our work with other educators across the state at the CAIS regional summit meeting. We had strong attendance at our session and many folks asked us a slew of questions. It appears that there is a lot of interest in our approach to design thinking, and we are excited at the prospect of helping other schools achieve wonderful learning outcomes for their students as a result of a 'philosophy first' design thinking approach.

Here is the link to the slide deck and resources that were shared.

Lower School Takes a Big Step

As mentioned in previous posts, design thinking has been embraced by the Lower School faculty, and students at all grade levels have been engaging in projects that feature design thinking (both big and small). While all of this was happening, it came to pass that there were some capital projects for maintenance upgrades on deck for the Lower School that would be completed over the summer. This presented a unique opportunity to the leadership of the Lower School to actually create a "design center" in part of the campus.

The Division Head began by drafting out the possibilities, and then meeting individually with several folks who would be involved in the process. He then vetted the idea with the Lower School leadership team and got their approval. Finally, the plan was shared with the full faculty at a faculty meeting in early February, and once again, it was met with approval. Several discussions with capital project managers and facility developing personnel ensued, and it appears that starting in the 2015-2016 school year, our Lower School will have a true "design center" on its campus!

The way this will be achieved is to take several classes and programs that had been spread across campus and move them into more natural adjacencies. For example, the space where the design center will be currently houses our library, two science classes, a junior kindergarten class, and a language class. The library and science rooms will stay. The language class will move to be near the other language teachers, which means our art room can move into the area with our library and science rooms. The junior kindergarten class will also relocate into a better adjacency with other junior kindergarten rooms, which will allow our wood shop program to also move into the building.

As a result, our art, wood shop, science rooms, and library will all be in one facility together, which we'll be referring to as the "Design Center" for Lower School. These adjacencies will allow students to more easily engage in interdisciplinary projects that incorporate classroom learning, science, and art/design. Very exciting!

7th Grade Plantastic Voyage!

As mentioned in the post about our faculty visit to the Lighthouse Creativity Lab, one of the newly redesigned lessons that emerged from our visit belonged to a science teacher in our Middle School. Sergina Bach was able to fully redesign a traditional lesson about photosynthesis into a comprehensive design thinking experience - and when she returned, her entire 7th grade science team enthusiastically adopted the project across all 7th grade science classes.

The project was called "The Plantastic Voyage" and it was created to apply student learning about photosynthesis and plants by having them create a means to transport and grow plants during a mission to Mars, as well as creating a way to establish the plants once on Mars. Sergina took this project, integrated her new learning about Tinkercad, iterative thinking, and student-centered design processes, and set students off on an engaging and fun design thinking project.

Sergina and her colleagues bravely ventured into the world of Tinkercad - a first for our School. Tinkercad is a free software program that allows for 3d drafting using simple tools. It is very intuitive, generally speaking, and the students appeared to like working with the program. While we did not have the ability to 3d print student products prior to the final presentations, we discovered that the students enjoyed the digital drafting process enormously, and we saw them iterate their designs from words to basic drawings to 3d renderings, each time with improvements to the design. This project definitely highlighted that 3d printers would be something that would greatly enhance design thinking projects, and so we will be discussing ways to integrate these on both of our campuses.

On the left, a student's hand-drawn iteration. On the right, their vision realized in TinkerCad.

During the student work time on this project, I was able to visit all classrooms and personally experience the students' enthusiasm and excitement as they imagined, designed, and created their solutions. One one memorable visit, I was treated to having students give me a practice run of their project presentations, after which they asked for feedback. Not only was it great to see their enthusiasm in their presentations, I was surprised when they so openly asked for critique of their work, and more surprised when they thoughtfully considered the feedback given. In another class, I was treated to a student volunteering to get feedback from the full class on their prototype presentation. The reason I was surprised by all of these things is that my observations denote a turning point in terms of student process of creation in their projects - not so long ago students would have finished their project and been... done. Now, they approach their work as more iterative process, and before being finished, they test out their work and seek feedback.

Students loved the ability to create CAD models and also prototype models for this project!

In a couple of cases, we were able to 3d render the student's thinking. Here's a 3d print of a student's concept for a plant incubator that would keep plants alive on the space ship and on Mars too:

Faculty Visit to Lighthouse Creativity Lab

In the latter part of January, a group of 11 Parker faculty visited the Lighthouse Charter School, which is located in Oakland, California. We had participants from all three divisions on the trip. Why? Well, Lighthouse not only has a really fantastic and fully outfitted "maker space" (this is essentially another name for a design lab - both of them are spaces that allow students and faculty to produce both rapid prototypes as well as finished products), Lighthouse also provides specialized instruction to visiting teachers about how to best engage design thinking in their instruction. We were very fortunate to not only have Aaron Vanderwerff, the director for the Creativity Lab, as our guide - we also were joined by Angi Chau, who runs the Bourn Idea Lab at Castilleja School. Our consultant, Parker Thomas, also came each day to assist us.

View of the Creativity Lab space @ Lighthouse

We were all impressed by the "wall of stuff" in the room!

One purpose of our visit was to allow these 11 faculty to receive hands on experience using many of the tools that are used in a maker space or design lab, including 3D printers, computers with CAD design and basic programming software, laser cutters, and other "tools of the trade." Over the course of two days this group of faculty went from having zero knowledge or experience about these things to producing finished products that related to potential projects they would later use with students. The majority of faculty in our group had never been exposed to these technologies, and so having the opportunity to receive an introduction and guided practice on these various technologies was enormously beneficial. We had English, history, and foreign language teachers learn, use, and develop lesson ideas that integrated these technologies to improve a lesson they'd previously used in the classroom. Meanwhile, our science, technology and math teachers learned some new approaches to integrating technology into their lessons, as well as learning some new technology as well.

However, the main purpose was for our faculty to be exposed to the nuances and various iterations of design thinking - which includes elements of engineering design, art design (creative process), the philosophy of making, and also studying complexities in systems. As a result of their learning on these topics, each faculty member would then engage in crafting a lesson or series of lessons that featured design thinking (and perhaps some of the new technologies) to take back to their students at Parker. This work was the main focus of our time and energy.

Our first activity was to examine the parts, purposes, and complexities of an object in small groups. This served as a focusing activity wherein we took an ordinary object and examined it very, very closely. We were encouraged to take the object apart to truly examine the many facets of its composition. My group had a remote control from an older TV. On the surface level. we understood the remote and its purpose. But opening it up to see the chip, wiring, LED light and circuit board that made the entire thing work brought an entirely new level of understanding about the complexity of a relatively simple device. All groups undertook this close examination - and yet the way each group went about that task was fascinatingly different.

The net result was that we had a greater understanding around the first two steps of our design thinking process: Notice and Focus. We also discovered that an activity such as this is a really great orienting tool for student examination of a variety of things ranging from literature to the scientific method.

We then engaged in an extended discussion about the word "design" and what it meant. We obtained new perspective regarding the intersection of design thinking with teaching and learning. Angi and Aaron shared their respective journeys in founding their design labs, including the victories and challenges that they encountered. While some significant learning outcomes have been observed and experienced, they both shared that the work was ongoing and evolving - and that they did not forecast a close to the iterating process of the design lab. It was fascinating to hear how different each school's design lab journey was. They have both cultivated a culture of design thinking in their schools, but it looks and feels very different in each location.

It was also interesting to hear just how long it's taken them to get to where they are. Both schools were well over five years into developing a design thinking program in their school, and they were still hard at work to establish it throughout their curriculum. This opened up a lot of questions from Parker faculty in terms of what worked, what didn't, and how to continue making progress at a tempo that felt natural. The learning we took away was that there is no one right way to engage in design thinking - and that for us to be successful, we need to find our unique Parker approach and continually refine it over time moving forward.

As briefly mentioned above, our groups also delved into the use of new software and hardware as part of delivering a design thinking curriculum. Our group particularly enjoyed its experience with TinkerCad and then 3D printing items. As we were all beginners, we began with a relatively easy object: a "Mickey Mouse" ring. Great fun and a lot of insight from our hands-on experiences with this. As a result, we have a host of faculty eager to try these things out with their teams moving forward.

Using TinkerCad to design the ring/object.

The 3D printer gets to work!

The finished "Mickey Mouse" ring - a success!

The faculty worked extraordinarily hard and really pushed their thinking in terms of not just design thinking, but engineering design and the application of coding/programming into all facets of the curriculum. Due to our small size, each faculty member received generous amounts of one-on-one time with all of our facilitators. At the end of the second day, we spent time having all faculty present their lessons to one another using a structured feedback protocol. As a result, what were already solid lessons became even more creative and meaningful. In the next post, you'll see one of the lessons that was re-imagined in the Creativity Lab brought to life!

Sharing an English lesson involving Design Thinking

Sharing an integrated math/science lesson.

Sharing a re-vamp of a MS science lesson.

Special thanks to Angi Chau, Aaron Vanderwerff, and Parker Thomas for providing us with a chock-full two days of incredible learning and discourse, not to mention great humor and delicious meals!