Design Thinking with the Extraordinaires

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored/paid post. This is simply a product I bought, used and loved.

The Extraordinaires is a fun product which introduces students to design thinking. The main part of this are character and product cards. Students firstly get a character card, they search for clues about their character and brainstorm everything they see, think and wonder. After this students get a product card, and have to design that particular product for that character...

...but wait... it get's better! The characters are all extraordinary for various reasons, (their job, their environment or their powers). They could be a genius child from the future, a werewolf or even a mermaid! The products are things we use in every day life, like a vehicle or a toy - BUT because of the extraordinary character, the students design incredible products! Imagine designing sports clothes for a werewolf, or transport for the ice queen!

The package comes with a lot more than that, including teaching tools, prompts to help with ideation and more - you can use just the cards or the whole lot.

So far we have used this twice:

• Spanish language acquisition class with Grade 8, 9 and 10 students.
  • I helped our MYP coordinator, Carmen Samanes, plan this session...but also took part as a student (a good way to help me improve my minimal Spanish). As students had so many ideas, they were keen to learn a lot of new vocabulary which helped them present their work. We had a little bit of anxiety that our older students would find this babyish - but they loved it! Students produced very impressive work, that demonstrate their language and design skills. We are looking into using this kit for a mini interdisciplinary unit with Design and Language Acquisition in the future. (NOTE: Carmen translated the cards into Spanish - Students worked on this for a few weeks). 
    
    Below is the work I produced (the students work was much better, as it has much more Spanish...I am basically a newbie...but I enjoyed learning this vocab - they also had a lot more time to work on the drawings)! I had a hipster werewolf - and I had to design sports clothes for him (I ended up creating a bike polo uniform!)

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• Two Hour Design Challenge
  • The second project was a Two Hour Design Challenge I ran for my MYP Design class at the end of the year. It was their last official class of Grade 7, so at that time they were a little sleepy, but they still produced excellent work! Students had the choice as working as individuals, in twos or threes. They produced hilarious work - a great way to end the year!
    
    
    
• I would also recommend this for a short activity for any  IB MYP Design teacher, or a longer project (where maybe they are all designing one particular product for their client, like an app, a toy, etc), for a group activity for students starting middle school, for any language aquisition class and even a fun activity for students to do at the start of the IB MYP Personal Project! Check out their website to see some great products students have created.

Below is the presentation I made for the students - I have deleted a lot of the slides that show the cards - and have just put two examples of every card - BUT if you do want to buy the Extraordinaires - it is fairly cheap, especially considering how much you can do with it! As a teacher who tries to only use free resources, (mostly browser based), I also try to only blog about free resources - but seriously can not recommend this enough. 

The kit we bought is the "The Extraordinaires® Design Studio PRO"