Redesigning Back to School Night at Campbell School of Innovation

This week's 2nd annual Back to School Night event at Campbell School of Innovation (CSI) was the most fun I've ever had at a back to school night!

Last year, our inaugural year as a school, we committed to rethinking back to school night. If we are a school of innovation, focused on design thinking and creativity and innovating the education experience for students, we couldn't very well host a "traditional" sit and get back to school night for our families. So last year began our journey into rethinking what back to school night would look like in our learning suites and our school, and this year, in our 2nd iteration, we had an opportunity to build on last year's event to create something even more engaging and meaningful for our families.

Our plan-- allow parents and families to experience a "day in the life of a 2nd grader".

We began by having all of our 2nd grade families enter our Wonder Lab together-- a shared workspace between our learning suites in the 2nd grade building. We regularly have all the 2nd graders work and learn together, with all three teachers (rather than the old school model of having them spend their time solely with their one teacher in their one classroom) so we wanted our families to experience that as well. We had some fun music playing and a welcome message up on our TVs while families had a few moments to meander in and socialize a bit.

Last year, with just two 2nd grade classes, we had families circle up for a pared down morning meeting (a la Responsive Classroom) during which they introduced themselves and read a morning message, but we're much bigger this year so this time we just had families stand around the Wonder Lab while we read a welcome message to the group.

The 2nd grade team then used 10 minutes or so whole group to introduce ourselves and also other team members that we, and the students, work closely with on a regular basis; to run quickly through some FAQs (mainly about our communication tools-- and that we'd send home weekly all the things info they'll need this year); and finally, we played a video that we made of the students describing what makes CSI unique and special to them.

Finally, it was play time! My team and I set up three different stations that we thought best represented the 2nd grade experience. In one learning suite we set up a BreakoutEDU game--the first game that students completed with us this year. In another suite we set up a mini design challenge-- parents were given a planning sheet and were asked to empathize about their kids, ideate, and then rapidly prototype a gift for their children. In the third room, we asked families to design and color in dots for their children (as we celebrated Dot Day all of last week) that the kids will be able to view in 3-D with the Quiver augmented reality app.

Families chose how many stations they wanted to visit, we opened up all of our learning suite walls just like we do for our students, and the families spent the rest of their time designing, creating, prototyping, and playing together with the entire 2nd grade community. In the process we had a chance to model the ways that our 2nd grade students engage in learning choices, creative thinking, collaboration, empathizing, exploration, hands-on experience, authentic learning, reflection and play.

The feedback was beyond what we could have asked for! Below, some quotes from families, & observations made, during and after the event:

• "...we've decided that this is so relaxing..." (comment from parent coloring a dot)
• "... this is so great!"
• So fun to see families taking so much thoughtful time on their design planning pages & really diving into their prototyping work
• The gorgeous dot art that families spent 15, 20, 30 minutes creating for their children
• "I hope he/she likes it..." (when talking about the prototypes they were creating)
• Shouts of excitement from the BreakoutEDU room as families began to solve puzzles & open locks!
• "But we're not done yet!" and "...we're having too much fun!" (comments from parents as Back to School night was ending and they were still making)
• "Our children are so lucky to have you!"
• "I was a little underwhelmed at the thought of doing a back to school night for the 13th straight year (and did feel guilty about it) but have to say your school/grade/classes made it such a fun experience... Love the concept and now can confidently say execution of the school!"

photo by @thehughes2

Scaffolding the "Ambiguity" for 2nd graders with "Design for a Buddy" 2.0

A new year has begun and that means an opportunity to iterate on the design work and projects that we engaged in for the first time last year in our 2nd grade classes!

Our first day of school kicked off this year with a design quick fire challenge that we also used on last year's "first day", but this year our work included a few upgraded elements. Last year's first day of school design experience left a number of our 2nd graders in tears as they struggled through their anxiety about failing, their fear of the unknown (i.e. no directions to follow & no cookie-cutter project to create) and their perfectionist tendencies.

Now in year two, my team re-vamped our "Design for your Buddy" design challenge-- with a particular focus on ideating, rapid prototyping, navigating ambiguity, and iterating skills-- to include scaffolding elements to support those students that need the support while developing their design mindsets.

Update #1: Diving deeper into empathy with Toy Story

Our new grade 2 team member, Dayan Flores, had the brilliant idea of launching our project with a clip from the new Toy Story 4 movie, to help students develop empathy for their classmates and how they might be feeling on the first day of school (for many a new school, since we just opened last year). Students related extremely well to the main character's experience of being nervous at a new school and others were even more excited to get prototyping once they made the connection between the Forky character (who the little girl makes out of everyday materials to be her friend) and the project at hand.

Update #2: Design vocabulary instruction

We embedded explicit vocabulary instruction into our day 1 work. We defined key design words we wanted our students to be able to use that day, integrating multiple means of accessing the language (movement, orally, visually). Understanding the language had a huge impact on their understanding of the process itself. Spending time defining "prototype" and "rapid prototyping" for example also meant they were better prepared to create something quickly and not get so wrapped up in making their creation perfect.

Update #3: Supporting design conversations

Most 2nd graders aren't used to interviewing others, asking questions and giving feedback so we spent a significant amount of time modeling this process and brainstorming sentences we might use to interview our partners. The teachers did most of the modeling in this first design challenge of the year, but as a grade level we had the students help us come up with example questions for the interview process. We recorded the suggestions on the board and then read them aloud whole group so that students had the language that they needed to talk to and interview their assigned buddy.

Update #4: "To-do" lists

In our design work, the teams often end up working at different paces, and it becomes challenging for students to know what's next as everyone around them is working within a different part of the process. This year we integrated a "to-do" into our 1st design challenge to help students keep track of where in the process they were working and what was coming next.

To-do lists became a regular fixture in our projects last year, but not until the second half of the year. We decided to launch this executive functioning tool right away this year to help students "navigate ambiguity" (one of the d.School at Stanford design abilities for design thinking) and it really helped many of our students move at their own pace and cut down on a lot of the "what next" questions.

Update #5: Maker bags as an option

Many of last year's melt downs during our 1st day of school design challenge had to do with the "openness" of the work. Ideating, choosing materials, deciding how to craft a prototype in a timed setting... for some students this was more than overwhelming. This year, we decided that we'd have a few pre-made sets of materials available as an option for students that needed a starting point.

With many of our students now in their second year at CSI, we didn't have as many needing that kind of support, but there were still a couple that did. We were able to talk them through getting started a little faster with their rapid prototyping when they had a small set of materials to choose from rather than an entire room full of materials. The kits quelled some of their anxiety and is hopefully a first step toward them independently navigating ambiguity in future design work.

"So you want to make a cat for your buddy? Okay, well this paper tube looks a bit like a cat's body to me...what do you think? What else might your cat need? Which of these items on the table looks like a tail/leg/etc?"

Update #6: Reflection starting day 1

Knowing that reflecting is such an important part of learning, our team wanted to improve on how often we embed reflection time into our work. In "Design for a Buddy" 2.0 we carved out about 10 minutes time at the end of our work for students to reflect on the process. We basically just wanted them to start thinking about what went well and what was challenging. In our second design cycle (post coming soon) we had students do more reflective writing and then recording in Seesaw to explain some of their thinking and design process.