Design Thinkers in the Kindergarten Classroom VAS POURNARAS
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esign thinking “is important in education because we want our students to develop higher-order thinking skills and be able to analyze, synthesize, innovate, and thus readily deal with real-world problems.”1 In 2019-2020, our kindergarten students embarked on an in-depth study of home and homelessness. But we got to this by an interesting path. After reading “Fly Away Home” by Eve Bunting, we decided to focus our social studies curriculum on studying birds. Our research about birds led us down many paths including scientifically drawing birds through the process of peer critique and multiple drafts, creating 3-dimensional models of birds, learning about birds through science class, and writing creative stories about birds. Arguably one of the most rewarding ways we learned about birds was when our class used design thinking as a way to create homes for birds. In small groups,
students went through the design thinking process of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and implement. Design thinking connects to several important academic and social emotional skills that children learn and hone in on in kindergarten, including empathy, curiosity and collaboration.2 I also believe that for our youngest learners, design thinking gives them a hands-on experience using the information they have been learning about it in class. As we were learning about birds, final construction of our new elementary school building and playground was taking place. We learned that as part of this, there would be a few trees that would have to be cut down on campus. This brought on many conversations about what we could do to help the birds that lived in those trees who would then become homeless. Our students have a natural sense of empathy, which can be a powerful motivating force. This empathy was the jumping off point for our design thinking
Using design thinking with some of our youngest students proves to be successful and valuable, and, in addition to building a great and authentic curiosity about a topic, helps them develop some very important social-emotional skills. 34
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