Design Thinking Activity for Year 7 Transition Day

In January, our school will expand as we welcome 200 new Year 7 students and begin our MYP journey.  We held a number of transition activities, one of which was an adaptation of Wallet Project from Stanford’s d.School, a fast-paced project that takes students through a full design cycle. In place of students designing a wallet for another student, for our adaptation, we asked students to think about the challenges they may face in their first few weeks in their new high school. We devised this adaptation  for a number of reasons:

1. We are a select entry school and the students come from over 40 feeder schools meaning that a student may not have many, or even any, friends joining them. We wanted to find a way for a student to connect with least one other student beyond a superficial acquaintance.
2. Many students travel long distances to get to the school each day and may have to use public transport. This means students may have many new challenges with long days that require planning and organisational skills to ensure they have a charged laptop, snacks, travel cards, sports kits and more.
3. We will be introducing MYP Design which is different from the Australian digital technologies curriculum area that they are used to. We wanted an opportunity to give them an heads-up of what they might expect.

Click here for the Design Thinking Student Booklet we put together to lead the students through this process.

Here are a few of the challenges that students faced with some very creative solutions:

Challenge – I need to be organised in the morning to ensure I take everything to work.  Solution – A talking pancake that will conduct a breakfast briefing.

Challenge – I find it hard to make friends. Solution – A friendly hologram that will make friends for the student.

Challenge – I get anxious about coming to school and don’t sleep well. Solution – A calming bedtime story.

Here our the timings that we used: