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BUILDING CREATIVE CAPACITY Why Innovation Works So Well for Our Students By Sam Gerlach At Benchmark, our dynamic school-wide innovation program is the core of engaged learning, designed for the depth and breadth of our student’s experience, and is an integrated part of daily instruction. The Innovation Labs serve as a catalyst for multi-modal classroom learning and as a playground for our students to discover, imagine, explore, and make meaningful connections that further their personal and academic growth.
Fairy Tale Problem Solving
Benchmark’s signature innovative approach
A great example of a teacher-initiated engineering challenge is the Fairy Tale Project that Karen
The core of our innovative approach is grounded by
Berry’s class completed this year.
Benchmark’s specific design thinking language and process. At every grade level, we have embedded
The students had two choices. In the first,
design thinking and problem-based learning, guiding
students could be Little Red Riding Hood and
our students in using our design thinking process. From
their task was to create a basket that could hold
design thinking sprints that take place in both Lower
a lunch that they were going to have with their
and Middle School Innovation Labs, to the 6th and 7th
grandmother. In the alternative, students could
grade culminating capstone projects, the integration
be the fourth little pig and they had to build a
of age-appropriate maker space education builds our students’ creative capacities and agency.
house out of certain materials that were in the
Through teacher-initiated engineering challenges,
winds from the big bad wolf.
Innovation Lab that could withstand the howling
student-initiated inquiry-based projects, and discipline-
Creativity was at the center of this project.
specific approaches, our students further develop “the
Working on the problem brewed excitement
4 C’s” of critical thinking, creative problem-solving, collaboration, and communication.
and generated creative problem-solving and
Why is this approach important for today’s students?
they were trying to create the strongest wall
collaboration among the first graders, whether for the front of their piggy’s house or the best
Students today are digital natives who work best when
basket handle that would be both practical and
they feel a personal connection to the material and
aesthetically pleasing.
the problems they are asked to solve. The combination
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Benchmark Magazine | Fall 2023
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