We just finished up all the design challenges here in the Ogden Makerspace and it was a pretty cool experience for me, the classroom teachers and more importantly, the students. This is going to be a fantastic year of making and l think I have the most fun job in the district!
This post focuses around the 4 C’s of learning, in the context of making, which include collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. I had all grade levels come down for a stand-alone design challenge in which students were asked to construct the tallest tower they could with the given materials. Those materials included four Starbucks venti size cups, 2 cardboard rolls (toilet paper size), two corks and a straw. They were also given just one yard of tape and told that that was all the tape that they would receive so they had to use it wisely. Each group also received two pieces of paper and scissors and pencils to either draft out ideas or they could use the paper as part of the design. I also gave each group 20 minutes to construct their tower. Before students started to create their towers, I told them about the 4 C’s. I told them that I would be looking for how they talked to one another, how they worked together, how creative they could be together and how well they could think together. I know that last part “thinks together” sounds off but it can be done. Student’s share ideas and then those ideas build on one another until the final product.
So with the first class, All the structures looked the same because they were all given the same materials and told that they had to use them all. The same thing happened with the second class they came in, taped each cup end on end and then taped the two cardboard rolls, the corks and the straw together. So this continued into the third class as well and by then I finally wised up and realized I needed to change up the challenge. It also jogged my memory of a quote that I read from a book called LAUNCH. The book is written by AJ Juliani and John Spencer. The quote that struck a nerve with me is by Chris Lehman who is an educational consultant and it goes like this, “If you assign a project and get back 30 of the exact same thing that’s not a project that’s a recipe”. That is exactly what I was getting…recipes and I wanted projects. So I changed up the challenge I added more materials which included two pipe cleaners, 8 popsicle sticks, 6 snow cone cups, and a four inch long section of a foam noodle. I then told the students that they had to work together as a group to either create a castle or a rocket out of all the materials in front of them. Each group was still given just one yard of tape.
With this change up in the design challenge, I realized that the students had agency within this project. They had student voice and choice in what that end product being castle or rocket looked like. So with the agency piece I also noticed that more students were engaged whereas before, a couple of kids took ownership and built the tower themselves while one or the other two members of the group just sat back and watched and offered little to no support. Giving them that choice of what to make, allowed all kids to design a part and contribute to the whole. The collaboration ramped up and so did communication as they were invested in the project. In fact I had a group of third graders down here and a group of four boys went completely off script and decided that they didn’t want to do either a castle or a rocket that they were going to build Battle-bots so they shared all the materials and built these amazing robots that could potentially have battles with one another. The teacher and I noticed it right off the bat that they were going in a different direction and I thought for a moment, ” They’re not following directions”, but then I realized that they were so engaged in what they were making because they decided this is what they wanted to do. To me, this was absolute agency because those students took making into their own hands. They were being creative, they were collaborating and communicating about materials. The teacher and I thought about interrupting and and asking questions about what they were doing but then I realized that they may get frustrated with me because I’ve disrupted their thinking, I’ve disrupted their engagement and I’ve disrupted the design thinking process and I didn’t want to do that I wanted to see what these four young guys could do from start to finish. I know that there will be times where I want/need to stop and ask questions of students but for this first trial, it was about seeing how they were using the 4 C’s in the context of making.
I am really looking forward to building up student capacity around the 4 C’s of learning. I think it will take time but working through the projects with each grade level day-by-day and week-by-week the students will come to understand how to work more collaboratively how to communicate their ideas in ways that push their own thinking and others, they are all creative that it is not just reserved for the artistic people that we all have that creative spark within us, and that they are able to think critically in the context of making and connecting that making to what they have learned or will learn in the classrooms
Here are some of the photos from finished products of the design challenge.
