Integrated Subject: Science

Science teacher Lisa Dettloff had her students learn about the green features of the Nueva buildings through a series of labs. Each fourth grader then designed and built a prototype of a green home within a given budget. In the Design Thinking portion of this project, we emphasized enhancing the students' interviewing skills. They were instructed to ask Why Questions and to use the phrase "Tell me more."

I did two interviewing demonstrations, one where I modeled what not to do when interviewing (not paying attention, interrupting, offering my own opinions, etc.) and one that was a better example. The fourth graders were able to identify my mistakes in large part due to their previous work with active listening over the years in SEL classes
(Research/Deep Dive - Ask & Listen).

Now it was their turn to put theory into practice. In teams of four, they conducted two interviews of teachers or parent volunteers. The 4th graders were encouraged to go for deep information by asking a series of Why Questions. In Design Thinking, we call this process Looking Beneath the Surface. We are guiding students to reflect deeply upon what they are hearing and to ask open-ended follow-up questions. These skills are not only important for Design Thinking, they are important in life.Teams then collected all the research they had done through Lisa's labs, on-line research sessions, and their interviews and created a Saturation Board (Synthesize & Define). The fourth graders sketched possible designs (Generate Ideas), using an N-LEED certification sheet to evaluate their buildings. Rapid prototyping followed.

The students learned a great deal about the science of green technology and experienced the Design Thinking process. At the Green Building Fair, Libby Raab, a green architect and parent, told them, "I am so impressed by your knowledge of current green building features. In this project, you have been doing many of the things that I do in my work, including having to make difficult trade-offs."