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This short exercise introduces teachers and students to design thinking. Students are challenged to design a watering system for a school garden that can be sustained with minimal human intervention during summer break. Students will gain an understanding of the needs of various stakeholder groups through empathic interviewing.

In this design challenge, student teams are asked to create an advertising campaign that will appeal to teens and convey strategies for getting a minimum of 8 hours of sleep per night. Teachers provide opportunities for students to conduct research and explore issues related to sleep deprivation in a digital world.

In this activity, students are challenged to design a prototype machine or tool that is capable of restoring balance to Earth’s damaged ecosystems. Teachers should build prior knowledge related to the concepts of sustainability and ecosystems before the design day.

The quantity of 5 is an essential benchmark number for young students, and a strong understanding of 5 will contribute to their understanding of 10, another significant benchmark number in our number system. As the complexity of number increases, the importance of understanding the decomposition of 10 in higher-level operations becomes evident. 

We use patterns to represent identified regularities and to make generalizations. This lesson extends patterning concepts taught in Kindergarten and Grade 1, where students learned to identify and extend patterns with multiple attributes. It is essential for students to describe, extend, and make generalizations about patterns that seem to be the same or different. This kind of categorizing and generalizing is an important developmental step on the journey toward algebraic thinking. 

Teachers and students at Richmond elementary schools, including Lord Byng and Tomekichi Homma, have been examining how mathematics can be experienced in the community, and connecting with stories of place. Inspired by the book Tluuwaay Waadluxan Mathematical Adventures, created by Elders, educators, community members, and students in Haida Gwaii, the Richmond teachers and students have looked for mathematics in their community and posed and solved problems of interest to them.

This learning activity shows an example of cross-curricular teaching in which students have an opportunity to be innovators and constructors of their own learning. In focusing on designing and marketing a product, this learning activity mirrors the interdisciplinary nature of the world: to be successful in business it is important to have creative ideas, good communication skills, and a solid understanding of financial matters. Therefore, it felt natural and realistic to combine Math, Applied Design, and Language Arts in this activity. 

Through the exploration of text, discussion, and the activities of the lesson, students have opportunities to respond to the inquiry question with an informed and thoughtful voice. As students engage with text, collaborate with one another, create personal responses to text, and finally reflect on the process of their learning, they are doing so purposefully, considering the inquiry question. 

Through this Makerspace activity, students come to know that Arts Education/Design and Science share a common process that involves the development and testing of hypotheses through direct investigation. Makerspaces incorporate thinking, inquiry, making and hands-on experiential learning through active engagement within small groups.