By Secondary School faculty Callie Bushmiller, Dilan Abeynarayana and Melanie Sanchez
Grade 8 students recently completed an interdisciplinary unit which was collaboratively designed by HKA’s Science and English Language & Literature teams. The unit began with the classes watching ‘The Martian’ and analysing the film’s portrayal of divergent thinking, failing forward and problem solving.
With that initial evaluation complete the students were presented with the premise that they had just awoken in a strange uninhabited environment where they had to rely on themselves to survive. They played a dice game through which they were allocated a persona, some equipment and a specific location. They then investigated that location to consider the biotic and abiotic factors which would affect their ability to survive, and completed this part of the project by creating a visual of their persona and ecosystem and writing a survival guide.
The students were then asked to imagine that they had survived and been rescued, and were given a post-rescue social entrepreneurship design project. Based on what they had learned about what was needed to survive as an individual in their location, they were tasked with designing an invention as a team which would have increased their likelihood of surviving, or made life more enjoyable in that ecosystem.
The project culminated with student teams pitching their survival invention to a panel of faculty investors with ‘HKA bucks’ being allocated to each team based on how well the invention met the survival and social entrepreneurship criterion.
When asked to reflect upon what they had learned during this unit Daxton observed “I loved the survival concept and then bringing together what we learned to come up with our invention. The idea of making the investor pitch was nerve wracking but definitely helped me develop better public speaking and presentation skills.” and Chiara added “Typically I prefer working as an individual and this project required me to work in a team. I feel like my problem solving and negotiation skills improved as a result.”
At Hong Kong Academy we believe that teachers should add value to the student experience by designing learning experiences which require higher level thinking and personal engagement from the students. Rather than finding the answers to their conundrum the students had to construct their own understanding based on the resources provided. This method of applied problem solving requires deep thinking and leads to students better understanding content and being able to build upon it much more effectively than simply memorising content for a test.
