Design Thinking: Grade 3

Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving approach that can be adapted for any grade level, including third grade. By introducing design thinking, you can help students develop their creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication skills. In this blog post, we’ll explore how you can implement design thinking in your third-grade classroom. Here are some tips

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Design Thinking: Grade 5

Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving method that has been used by individuals and organizations around the world to come up with creative solutions to complex problems. With its focus on empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing, design thinking provides a framework for students to develop their critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration skills. Here are some

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Design Thinking: Grade 4

Design thinking is a problem-solving process that can help students think creatively and develop innovative solutions to real-world challenges. When students engage in design thinking, they are encouraged to think outside the box, work collaboratively, and be persistent in the face of setbacks. As students move up in grade levels, the complexity of their design

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Design Thinking: How Grade Level Influences Materials Decisions

Design thinking involves a lot of prototyping and testing, and having the right materials makes a big difference in how well students are able to create and refine their ideas. In this blog post, we’ll go through some of the materials that we recommend for prototyping and testing at different grade levels. Kindergarten For Kindergarten

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Design Thinking: Reviewing All Your Materials Choices

Design thinking is a powerful process that encourages students to create and innovate. Prototyping and testing are crucial steps in the design thinking process, and the use of a diverse set of materials is vital to their success. Teachers have many materials options for prototyping and testing, and each material has unique advantages and disadvantages.

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Design Thinking: Your Lesson Rubric

Design thinking challenges provide K-5 students with valuable opportunities to develop essential skills such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. To effectively track student learning and engagement during these challenges, teachers can utilize our rubric. In this blog post, we will introduce our rubric that can be adapted and used to assess student progress

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Design Thinking: Your Lesson Checklist

Design thinking challenges offer K-5 students an exciting and hands-on approach to problem-solving. To ensure the success and engagement of these challenges, teachers can utilize a checklist that encompasses essential elements. In this blog post, we will explore a comprehensive checklist that teachers can use to create impactful design thinking experiences for their students. The

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Design Thinking: An Overview for Elementary Classrooms

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that encourages individuals to empathize with end-users and define problems before ideating, prototyping, and testing potential solutions with built-in opportunities to iterate on those solutions based on feedback. This methodology has become increasingly popular in education as a way to teach students how to think creatively and solve complex

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Design Thinking: Kindergarten

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that encourages students to think creatively and critically. It’s a process that can be taught to students of any age, including Kindergarten students. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to introduce design thinking to Kindergarteners and provide some accessible and relevant design thinking challenges for this grade level.

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Design Thinking: Test

Why Test? In the Test step, students take their refined solution and test it out in real-world scenarios. This could involve user testing, where students observe how their solution is used by others, or it could involve creating a prototype and testing it out in a real-world setting. The goal is to identify any issues

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Design Thinking: Prototype

Why Prototype? In the Prototype step, students use the ideas they generated in the Ideate step to create a tangible representation of their solutions. This can take many forms, from physical models made out of cardboard or clay to digital mockups created on a computer. The purpose of creating a prototype is to test and

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Design Thinking: Ideate

Why Ideate? Ideate is the second step in the design thinking process. It is all about generating a wide range of ideas and possibilities for how to solve the problem or challenge that was identified in the Understand step. It involves brainstorming, sketching, and thinking creatively. Ideating is not about evaluating ideas or choosing a

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Design Thinking: Understand

Why Understand? Understand is the first step in the design thinking process. It is about gaining a deep understanding of the problem or challenge that you are trying to solve. It involves asking questions, doing research, and observing the people who are affected by the problem. Understanding is not about coming up with solutions, but

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Design Thinking: Overview

Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that encourages individuals to empathize with an end-user, define a problem, ideate potential solutions, prototype and test those solutions, and then iterate on those solutions based on feedback. This methodology has become increasingly popular in education as a way to teach students how to think creatively and solve complex

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