Enrichment Curriculum / TK-8th Grade PBL
For this project, I was the sole designer and writer of an enrichment curriculum created for a California-based educational organization. The curriculum includes four units for each level of their summer program serving approximately 23,000 public school students. The 12 projects in the curriculum provide challenges related to the visual arts, STEAM, and social studies while using the steps of the design thinking process as an instructional framework. The completed package included lesson plans for 240 hours of programming, student workbooks, and exemplar images detailing what students’ work products for each project might look like.
Sample Lessons By Grade Band
TK-2nd Grade
In this introductory unit for TK-2nd grade, students choose a favorite character from a book, show, or movie and use what they know about them to prototype their dream home. Along the way, they experience each step in the design thinking process.
The sample lesson guides students as they brainstorm ideas for rooms to include in their dream home, designed to address their character’s needs. The accompanying worksheet allows them to sketch their ideas while encouraging them to generate multiple ideas focused on each need.
3rd - 6th
Similar to the TK-2nd grade band, in the introductory unit for 3rd-6th students are asked to create an ideal space while working their way through each step of the design thinking process. In this version, however, they empathize with and design for the needs of a classmate.
Evaluating and choosing ideas to incorporate into a design plan is the focus of the lesson featured here. The supporting worksheet provides students with clear criteria for idea evaluation using a format that will help them identify their strongest ideas at a glance.
Middle School
In the second unit of the Middle School curriculum, students apply what they have learned about the design thinking process while creating an artwork in response to an issue-based theme chosen by the group.
The provided sample lesson guides students through a peer-feedback structure focused on the creativity and messaging alignment demonstrated by the design plan for each artwork. The accompanying worksheet gives students a space to collect the “glows” and “grows” provided by their peers, as well as any suggestions they might have on how to achieve their goals for the artwork