Design Thinking: Improving Schools, Empowering Students

What is Design Thinking? Design Thinking for educators is a creative process that helps students and teachers design meaningful solutions in the classroom, at your school, and in your community. According to Thomas Riddle, Assistant Director of Roper Mtn. Science Center, “design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that begins with developing empathy for those facing a particular challenge.” In a nutshell, design thinking is a problem solving framework that allows students and teachers to take action, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes.

In his article, Improving Schools Through Design Thinking, Riddle describes five main stages of Design Thinking that have been used in the business community, but can also be easily transferred to the education world:

1. Empathize - This is the foundation of design thinking. Empathy allows us to see and understand the needs of others. It forces us to look away from ourselves - seeing other viewpoints and demonstrating understanding towards those often differing views.
2. Define - Listen carefully to the problem at hand. Get input from those directly affected. Riddle explains, “Clearly defining the problem gives you a better chance at creating a clear solution.”
3. Ideate - This means to form an idea; to imagine or conceive. Oftentimes we call this the “brainstorming” phase. Students can be particularly innovative and excel at “thinking outside the box”.
4. Prototype - Putting the idea into a preliminary model - knowing that it may go through several changes and adaptations.
5. Test - Test the prototype and make adjustments. Be flexible and open to change.

Design Thinking can be a powerful tool for both students and schools overall. As educators and administrators, we too can use the design thinking process for learning and making improvements within our schools and communities. Riddle has an excellent follow up article on Edutopia titled Empowering Students with Design Thinking. Here he gives concrete examples of how he’s using design thinking with students.
Susie Wise, Director of the K12 Lab Network at the Stanford d.school, also notes that the last few years have shown an “explosion of interest in design thinking”. The spread of design thinking is showing up in both professional development opportunities for teachers and as challenges for students. Design Thinking in Schools provides a directory of schools and programs that use design thinking in the curriculum for K12 students.
Design thinking is a mindset. Your Pepper Professional Development Courses and Workshops can help you create a more engaged and active classroom that includes Design Thinking strategies and processes. We’re adding new courses and workshops regularly, so be sure to check them out.

Learning about Literature Circles

Literature Circles are a great way to get your students engaged and excited about what they are reading. Literature Circles for text discussion is a teaching tool that is used with small groups of students to engage them in discussing literature that all of the participating students have read. After reading the selected text, students guide their own discussion by responding to what they have read. Students may discuss characters, events, writing style, or personal experiences related to the story. Education World highlights the use of Literature Circles by getting insights and advice from two experts about using this instructional strategy.

Katherine L. Schlick Noe, Ph.D., associate professor at the School of Education at Seattle University, told Education World why this teaching approach is so effective: "Literature circles offer students a chance to be readers and writers, to apply the literacy skills that they are learning."

Education World also shares that according to Harvey Daniels, author of the book Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom (Stenhouse Publishers, 1994), literature circles are small, temporary discussion groups of students who have chosen to read the same work of literature. Each member agrees to take specific responsibilities during discussion sessions. The circles meet regularly, and the discussion roles change at each meeting. When the circle finishes a book, the members decide on a way to showcase their literary work for the rest of the class.

Daniels likes the idea of assigning students individual roles within the Literature Circle. The use of roles allow student to see how what they do affects work within a group. The use of roles is very helpful, especially in the beginning, in giving students a sense of responsibility and ownership. However, once students are comfortable with engaging in the Literature Circle, teachers may choose to discontinue assigning student roles. This allows for more freedom of discussion.

The use of Literature Circles in the classroom provides a way for students to think critically about what they have read. Collaboration is essential to the implementation of Literature Circles as students learn to listen to other students' thoughts and opinions and learn from them - even if they don't agree. Literature Circles allow students to develop a deeper understanding of what they read through structured discussion and response opportunities.

Pepper has released a new workshop focused on Literature Circles as part of its new Pepper Online Workshop (POW!) content. This workshop is provided in two sections - one focused for elementary and a second for middle and high school. You can check all of our new POW content by visiting the Courses and Workshops section on your dashboard.

Introducing Pepper Online Workshops (POW!)

POW! Are you ready to add some Pepper into your personalized, online learning plans?

PCG Education is introducing a new series of content collections - Pepper Online Workshops (POW!) – focusing on the hottest topics that educators are dealing with across the country. Our new workshop series is based on WestEd’s powerful collection of resources from their Doing What Works project featuring amazing videos, interactive planning tools, and other research-based materials.

In the spirit of keeping with Pepper’s core values, these online workshops – although much shorter – will remain true to our vision – to provide K-12 educators with high-quality, interactive, engaging, research-based and applicable to your school environment.  

Currently, users can find workshops focused on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Math, Science, and Language Arts. You can learn more about UDL by checking out a previous blog post, Making Learning Accessible for All: Universal Design for Learning.

Look for our new workshops this week focused on using Literature Circles in the classroom.

PCG Education will be releasing new POW content collections every week. To find these new workshops, visit your Pepper dashboard and click on the updated "Courses and Workshops" link.

Then, find the tile labeled "keep learning" to access our new Pepper Online Workshops.

Please visit us at PepperPD.com/courses to review the new online workshop series and sign-up today.