MYP: Connecting to Design
Photo: Winnie's splattered paint study space
YEAR 7
Statement of Inquiry: Designers can use words and images in inventive ways to communicate and understand ideas.
Unit: Stop Motion Animation
Words are powerful. They influence (change) the way we think for better and for worse. Images, too, help us to communicate and understand ideas. Now, what if we combined them in the perfect union to create an entertaining and positive story to share with others?
Our Year 7 designers have been contemplating the above statement while researching and creating their own stop motion animations this term. It’s still early days, but below are some examples of works in progress.
YEAR 8
Statement of Inquiry: How might we develop an app which addresses one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals using innovation and imagination?
Unit: Apps for Humanity
Year 8 designers have embarked on an app creation project that addresses one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In this project, students are preparing innovative solutions to a local or global issue. We are in the early stages of idea generation, but students are already coming up with interesting ideas.
At the end of Term 3, students also completed their Tiny House floor plans and models.
YEAR 9
Statement of Inquiry: How can designers create innovative solutions to adapt environments with consideration for the needs of a particular community?
Unit: Urban Intervention
Over the past term, Year 9 students have come up with a range of proposals to develop spaces around the Preshil campus and in their local community. This unit has encouraged students to consider ways to ‘improve liveability’ and to think about how designers can invite and include people into community space. At the end of Term 3, students were given the task to consider possible alternatives to some of the spaces on the Preshil campus.
YEAR 10
Statement of Inquiry: Designers who use a diverse range of creative processes are able to develop innovative solutions for clients.
Unit: The Exquisite Corpse
Our Year 10 designers have just finished a unit called The Exquisite Corpse. In this unit, students started by creating a narrative brief in small groups. This narrative brief is essentially a descriptive story that describes the features and atmosphere of a physical space in written form. Some groups choose to use existing stories like Lewis Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland". Students then used these briefs to create hand-made models at home. Below is an example of some of the wild and wacky inventions students came up with.
Lewis Kingston, Fleur Fogarty
MYP Design teachers