Exploring Science Through the Arts...in Third Grade!

3rd Grade Environmental Studies Project: 

Threatened Bird Habitats in Southern California

This project came about in a very organic way, and as a result of that, it really held significance and meaning for our students... which led to buy-in across several disciplines. 

A visit to the estuary ultimately led to the biggest project of the year in third grade.

What happened:  a science project took off. Each year students visit the estuary as part of their regional studies. The students this year really honed in on the birds at the estuary and felt deep concern about the plight of native birds due to loss of habitat. Their concern (empathy) ignited a spark for the design team and this allowed us to really pick up on several elements of the students' concern - and we made the call to let students run with their passion and interest on this topic. It was clear to us that our students developed strong empathy for the plight of birds in our region and they wanted to do something about it. 

And so, we dug in! First, classroom teachers and science teachers gave time for students to do a deep dive and research birds in library. Students assembled facts and figures, and as part of their learning they crafted a narrative about the bird which they were studying. 

Research underway about various birds indigenous to our local area

After this, students used their art time to draw and paint their birds, with an emphasis on anatomical correctness and proportional representation. 

Students carefully draw their birds

In social studies and science, the students created a relief map highlighting watersheds for birds in San Diego county using a variety of resources and methods to demarcate zones and areas. 

Working on their maps

Students then investigated behavioral adaptations of birds to changing ecosystems by acting out bird movements for food, shelter, and socialization in drama and then we captured their "performances" using green screens to demonstrate how birds get food and sleep and move (using a realistic background selected by the students themselves).

Using a green screen to act out and demonstrate adapted bird behaviors

Physical adaptations of various birds were studied and explored in science, and then polished off in the design labs. Students built the beaks and other important element physical adaptations in the birds to demonstrate how those adaptations allowed birds to survive. 

Creating replicas of the physical adaptations for bird beaks 

At the close of all of the research, hands-on learning, writing, and drawing, we held our first design showcase. This showcase let students show off all of their work in the various parts of their classes. Students were actively engaged in teaching their parents about the different kinds of birds, beak types, behaviors, and problems with the local environment. This was the first "showcase" approach to students showing off their learning to parents or outside community, and it helped us set the tone and expectations for "design showcases" moving forward. This is going to be our model for demonstrating learning, with the hope of moving to bigger audiences outside of the school house later. 

Turnout for our inaugural showcase was outstanding!

One of our goals for this year was to create design projects in a way that we are addressing the required and appropriate guaranteed curriculum for each grade level. This is a great example. We hit curricular standards in art, science, social studies, literacy, and even math. The students absolutely loved this project and they were clearly incredibly proud of their work at the end. 

Students explain their research and project elements to parents

Students teaching parents about endangered birds in our area

5th Grade Environmental Play-Letting the students take the lead.

The set designers measure the stage

Costume and prop designers at work

Actors audition for parts

At the completion of every project the Design Team has a debrief session to reflect on the process.  After last year's 5th grade student lead play, we asked ourselves how the experience could have been even more meaningful for our students.  Could we do anything differently?  The answer was a resounding YES!  Last year the play was largely accomplished in the classrooms, during lunch, with support from a few subject specialists.  The resulting play was fabulous, but we wanted the students to play an even bigger part in the production.  This year, with the creation of the Scripps Design Lab and a flexible schedule in place, the 5th grade teachers and the Design Team are collaborating to offer students a unique opportunity...access to work spaces, designated time each day, flexible groupings, and the expertise of many teachers.  Whether it is sewing or building, singing or acting, lighting or sound effects the students can get help with whatever aspect of the project they need when and if they need it.  This new structure has enabled students to take real ownership of the process and their learning.

Here is how 5th grade teacher, David Ries, described the process in a letter to parents:

We are currently immersed in the production of our fifth grade environmental play.  The process is our most ambitious application of the Design Thinking principles that we engage in here at Francis Parker. 
The students started with a bit of research and discussion about what environmental issues were important to them.  Students then decided how they wanted to contribute to the process, from writing to acting to set design and costumes.  And once the script was finished, we broke up into our groups and began the arduous task of bringing our ideas to fruition.  The Design Team are providing the structure and support for students to help us collaborate on a daily basis.  It is wonderfully messy.
Sending a fifth grader to design a set or start rehearsing lines can be tricky.  Sometimes even chaotic.  Still, we map out our daily plans, we work our way through differences of ideas, and we reflect on how things are going well and how they are not.  Then we adjust our course.

We have ten working days until rehearsals begin.   I guarantee struggles and setbacks along the way, but we will get there.  We will put on an environmental play that may or may not save the world.  But students will walk away with valuable skills that will help them to be independent thinkers and workers.  They will have produced a substantial piece of work as a member of a collaborative team. 
That is significant.

4th Grade Business Sale a la Design Thinking

Our fourth grade students have an annual project that directly ties to benchmarks we identified as essential in the areas of math and social studies. This project has come to be known as the annual business sale. This year, we tried to adjust and make this project more "real world" for students by incorporating design thinking. While in prior years, student groups just chose an object to make, market, and sell, this year we approached things differently. Before deciding on an item, we introduced the fourth graders to the concept of "market research" and made this research a big part of the process this time. We had all of the students go out and talk with possible customers about what they would like to see available.

Market research with potential customers

Following the market research, students wrote up a business proposal and presented those proposals using newly acquired technology training. Side note: Again, we must note how important it is to backwards design these projects to ensure the students are skilled-up on essential functions prior to them applying those skills in a more public manner. In order to craft a successful proposal, students learned Keynote as well as learning basic modeling to project costs and revenue streams. Both of these elements were brand new to the project this year. They were highly successful additions!

Creating a business proposal presentation

A student shares their business proposal with peers

The next step was to create print advertisements in their art classes, and then going back to their technology learning to create a green-screen oriented commercial. As part of the research on marketing, students studied about various sales and marketing techniques, and those techniques had to be evident in their materials.

Creating advertisements for the sale

Learning about why some products sell and some don't in library

Creating Prototypes

Students then made prototypes and iterated designs before settling on the final design. This led right into the sale itself. Sales were on par as years past - perhaps just a bit higher than average but still robust. Students sold their items like small stores, including having a "season end" sale time a couple of weeks later on to finish selling all products.  

After the sale, the students then researched where they'd donate their proceeds and they also wrote a narrative persuasive essay about why funds should go to that cause. All in all, the project was very successful, and we had higher involvement of our specials and core classrooms. The student engagement was very, very high. On the other side, the vision for this project was probably less sharp than we would have preferred - it could have been more cohesive because of the meshing of content and product creation and we missed some key opportunities to more seamlessly integrate the many moving parts. This is something we will take into consideration when we approach the business sale next year.

Production day

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!