This term, Year 5 have continued to unpack design thinking through their current How We Express Ourselves unit of inquiry, with the central idea, ‘An understanding of design principles creates opportunities for individual and cultural expression.’

The boys have engaged in a wide range of activities to get them exploring the design thinking process, including collaborating with fellow students at Cromehurst School, International Grammar School and designing and making a range of projects throughout the unit.

The boys have worked collaboratively in groups to produce games to educate their fellow students at Cromehurst, from fine motor activities to learning about sun safety. The project has seen the boys learning to work together, to gather ideas, to build prototypes and test what they have made. They have also had to learn to take, and act upon feedback from the Cromehurst staff and students, an important part of the design thinking process. The maturity that the Year 5 boys have shown this term through working at Cromehurst has been fantastic, from both a service, and a learning perspective. It has been deeply rewarding to witness the growth that the Year 5 boys have made this semester, particularly through their empathic approach to working with children with special educational needs.

As part of their collaboration with students at the International Grammar School (IGS), the boys worked online with their fellow students at IGS to produce a script promoting respectful relationships. This is a great tie in with the school’s White Ribbon Day, promoting respectful relationships for all. At the time of writing, the boys will be visiting IGS tomorrow and are looking forward to filming the videos based on their scripts. Our boys will meet their fellow IGS students at the University of Technology of Sydney (UTS) to participate in a series of workshops and film their videos. Several of the boys have visited UTS with us previously at various Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) conferences, and it really is a wonderful showcase of cutting edge Australian design thinking and technology. Indeed, some of our boys may find themselves pursuing their further education there in the future…

Amongst it’s many benefits, I find that two of the most important qualities that design thinking promotes are both collaboration, and a greater sense of resilience, as our boys have to accept that sometimes they may need to go back to the drawing board in order to improve their product. That ability to take and act upon constructive feedback is invaluable in the design thinking process, whilst also encouraging students to work together collaboratively in order to refine their best ideas.

Whilst the design thinking process is in it’s relative infancy at our school, it has been a successful couple of years in terms of what we have achieved. We are proud of how far we have come as a school in a short space of time, and the boys and their enthusiasm are at the core of that.

Sam Watson and Pascal Czerwenka, Year 5