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.