How do you go from this:
To this:
Or this:
To this:
This is how!
The start of the year is the time to set expectations for how students work and live in the classroom. At my new school (!), we are also on a journey to create learning experiences that involve aspects of design thinking. I’m still new to these ideas, but two of the keys of the design process revolve around prototyping (think – drafting) and creating opportunities for meaningful feedback.
We also had the opportunity to work with the wonderful professionals from No Tosh, and I took advantage of having a one-on-one meeting with Ewan McIntosh (author of the first ed-tech blog I ever read!) to talk about how we can infuse design thinking at the start of the year to build our classroom community.
One of the things Ewan shared with me was the video Austin’s Butterfly (a must see). Ewan pretty much said, “Show this to the kids. That’s your lesson on feedback.” I loved how in the video the 1st grader Austin perseveres to create multiple drafts (prototypes) of this drawing, and I can only imagine what that taught him about connecting effort to results. So, I knew that I wanted to recreate the same experience for my students!
Instead of drawing butterflies, we made self-portraits, which seemed like a natural thing to do at the beginning of the year. I started by giving the students 5 minutes to draw their self portrait. The results were expectedly cartoon-like drawings that didn’t necessarily reflect true appearances. Here’s mine:
Prototype 1
I then brought the students together and showed them my own first prototype drawing hanging next to a photograph of myself. I asked them to give me feedback about how accurate my drawing was. They quickly noticed that I had drawn my face the wrong shape, I had no eyebrows, and I drew my hair parted the wrong way. I then showed them my second protoype and we noticed the improvements I had made and how the drawing, while not perfect, was an improvement (I told them I thought I looked like a mummy you see in a museum):
Prototype 2
I gave each student a photograph of themselves that I had taken earlier and gave them an opportunity to give each other feedback. They then drew themselves again, really focusing on drawing what they see. This time they had double the time – ten minutes – to work.
Over the next few days we continued this loop – giving feedback in partners and creating new prototypes. On each successive drawing, they had a little bit more time to work. As a class we watched the Austin’s Butterfly video. Interestingly, I think the kids worked hardest and longest on the drawing that they did right after we saw the video.
Prototype 3
In the end, the results varied, but most of the students made vast improvements on their work and got a sense of what it means to prototype and how the feedback loop can lead to improvement.
My final version
The most exciting part was mounting our work and hanging it on the wall, which not only gives our classroom a nice personal feel in the beginning of the year, but also allows us to be amazed by the work that the students completed.
Version 1 and 4
Mounted version
My goal will be to continue these ideas and to remind students throughout our year, whatever we are working on, how they can improve their work over successive drafts and prototypes, and how a careful eye and lots of effort can lead to great results.
