The jumpiest frog in the land- Week 3

This week we had to create a frog that jumps using a design brief.

Design briefs are a great idea for getting students to be creative, abstract and collaborative. An emphasis on having no right answer allows all students to participate and think critically which I like and allows everyone to participate and be 'right'. There can be such an over-emphasis on being 'right' and not being wrong but in a situation where everyone students idea is heard and neither right nor wrong a classroom environment results that is collaborative and supportive. Doing activities that involve design briefs for varying problems allows every student to be creative and involved.

Throughout this activity I found that in a design brief a teacher should: include drawing or writing, be specific and build their confidence, emphasise structure,use of analytical and descriptive language, thinking outside the box and using everything they're given. Resourcefulness and working as part of team or pair has so many advantages for students that will help them during their school careers. Design briefs can also be done with paper and pencil, as a whole class on a whiteboard or smart whiteboard or individually/in groups on a computer.

While doing the design brief for the frog I found that it was hard to find the right language to describe what you're actually doing, for all age levels it would be a real test to describe what they're doing using visual language. The analytical section was useful as well to reflect on how well you did, why it did or didn't work, how you could have done it better etc.

Fine motor skills were used extensively when we were creating our frog, this would help to empowers students to create, reflect, evaluate, communicate as they develop and master these fine motor skills. It seems very important to emphasise safety in all aspects, especially if students are working independently so they can be responsible for themselves and others.

It was interesting how many different ways you can achieve the same result, various interpretations of the same thing were seen as pairs around the room displayed how they made their frog jump. It's a significant 'a-ha' moment for any person, child or adult, when they are reminded, or discover, that their way of thinking isn't necessarily the only way of thinking.

Extending this activity could be to impose more specifics on the design brief, certain amount of tape or whether the frog should jump forward, backwards, upwards, doing a good copy of the brief, or coming up with an alternate method.

Making a box guitar seems like a great idea for students, I'd like to do it myself! It would work in the context of a design brief as well, perhaps the topic could be to create a musical instrument only out of the given materials, eg- tissue box, string, tape, a pencil etc.

Doing the quizzes on Quia was a lot of fun, sometimes hard to think of topics or questions but a lot of fun, to create and play! Students would absolutely love this and it would work well to allow students to be creating these quizzes or games while simultaneously testing their knowledge of a given subject.