The Foundation for a Meaningful Life
Kindergarten - Grade 9 in Southborough, MA
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Transforming Our World

Sixth grade students gave workshop-style presentations this month to Lower School students on one of the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The “Transforming Our World” workshops built off the research that students did for their sixth grade speech topics, where students spoke about one of the UN’s goals, how they connect to the issue, and why they believe it is important. The goals range from zero hunger to affordable clean energy and clean water and sanitation. The workshops were an interdisciplinary project between sixth grade writer’s workshop, science, and POD (principles of design) class. 

Students researched their chosen goal in science and literacy class and used the information they gathered to inform the speech writing process. In POD class, students were given a design challenge to bring attention to their goal by creating an interactive workshop incorporating the Google Jamboard. Students used the Fay School design process to brainstorm 5 - 7 ideas for a Google Jam to promote awareness on their topic and then narrowed their concepts down to the best idea. Then, they created a prototype of their Google Jam. Finally, they had the opportunity to test and evaluate their work by giving live presentations to third, fourth, and fifth grade students. “When you go to a conference, there’s usually the main speaker, and then there are smaller workshops and breakout sessions,” says Principles of Design Teacher Lisa Sanderson. “For their speeches, they were the main speaker, and in POD class, they designed the workshop and had the experience of presenting it to an authentic audience.” 

Presenting to third grade students, Erik M ‘25 introduced the goal of quality education. To help younger students understand some of the components necessary for quality education, Erik designed a game on the Jamboard that required students to sort conditions by whether they were “good” or “bad” for education. Students came up to the Jamboard, and one by one, they dragged and dropped items like “no electricity” into the bad category and “good resources” into the good category. Ryan S. ‘25, whose goal was Climate Action, designed a matching game on the Jamboard that asked students to connect climate facts such as the goal of preventing air pollution and the action of reducing trips in the car and avoiding burning leaves. After each presentation, audience members scanned a QR code that took them to a feedback form for each presentation. The audience rated each presentation by whether it was impactful, engaging, easy to understand, and they also shared any suggestions for improvement. “This project encouraged students to think like a teacher, planning, preparing, and thinking about their audience and objective,” says Lisa. “The presentations were not perfect, and some students discovered that the presentation did not work on the jam board as they had anticipated, but that’s okay, and it’s part of the learning process.” 
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48 MAIN STREET
SOUTHBOROUGH, MA 01772
main number 508-490-8250
admission 508-490-8201