Design Thinking 

During Headstart our 2022 year 9s undertook the Design Thinking project. Seven exceptional suburbs were created with each having a standout element in response to the brief. The overall winner was 9A. Congratulations also to 9C which won the People’s Choice award for the cohesive appearance and the amount of detail they included in their suburb.

A big thank you to the following people for giving up their time and expertise both before and during the three day project:

Staff

Suzanne Thornley

Lauren Caridi

Dahli Briedis

Jackie Matthews

Tina Alesi

Eva Glac

Elizabeth Leong

Lisa Blumenstein

William Vermieff

Geoff Perks

Nicole Merlich

Fiona Faulkes 

Leigh Roberts and Gerry van den Berg

Jonathan Hall, Phil Pearson and Jung Chen

Amanda O’Hara and the Middle School team

Year 9 Humanities and Maths teams for the pre-work on demographics and scaling

Judges

Linda Brown

Detta Gordon

Stef Cappuccio

Lauren Caridi 

Jemimah Stewart (Year 10) 

Year 10 student mentors

Joanna Lagadinou

Jemimah Stewart

Sammy Roberts

Holly Morrison

Olivia Ayyuce

Lauren McNabb

Sienna Kujawski

Marina Uceda

Ella Bennett

The final suburbs were amazing and reflected the enormous amount of collaboration of the classes.

Diana Gilbert

STEAM Learning Specialist and Science Domain Leader

Student view

On Wednesday 1st December the Year 9s started the Design and Thinking Project. This lasted three days and students were able to learn about various STEAM topics including robotics, laser cutting, electronic devices, coding, VR and energy efficient housing. Each class had the task of creating a 3 x 3m suburb that met a certain criteria and would cater to a certain aspect of the population. 

Out of all the classes 9A was the best suburb overall winning a pizza lunch. Kulin was the name of our suburb which is the indigenous land that our suburb was created on. Our suburbs street names were also named after indigenous plants. We included main features such as roads that our robot could follow, emergency services, housing and shops that catered for young families. Our goal was to make our suburb environmentally friendly and sustainable. To do this we included solar panels, bins, a recycling center, water tanks, wind turbines and many more small details. Another one of our main goals was to make our suburb inclusive. In the center of our suburb we have a globe surrounded by flags, representing an inclusive community which makes everyone feel safe and welcome. 

Overall it was a fun and engaging experience for everyone and we learnt lots of new skills. A big thankyou to the teachers who helped organise the program for all the year 9s. 

Trinity Taylor and Matilda Waugh 9A