2026 MDC Griffin Winter Academy Template PBL JOURNEY by

Solution Description

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Please include a brief description and picture of each team's final idea.

REFLECTION

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Take time to reflect on what went well. What will you change for next year? What feedback did you get from students, the business partner, the authentic audience that can help make this project even better?

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Show through pictures, videos, examples of student work to reflect how your students came up with multiple ideas.

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Show through pictures, videos, examples of works to reflect on how students narrowed their ideas, determined their best solution, and developed the solution.

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Show through pictures, videos, examples of student work, and written documentation to reflect how teams were built, how students uncovered and understood the driving question, the standards covered, and the launch into the project.

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Show through pictures, videos, examples of student work, links to reflect how your students built empathy, determined Need to Knows, and uncovered important information to solve their driving question.

QUOTES/CONTACTS

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Please add quotes from students, parents, authentic audience, and any business/community members you utilized. Please use first names only.

Our Driving Question

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

Create a furniture concept that provides individuals with unique needs, or for use in various environments (public spaces, private spaces, natural environments, business spaces, industrial spaces).

futureprepd2 — 2025-10-22 14:28:05 UTC

What IS Furniture?

2026-01-06 21:35:32 UTC

We wrote down the definition of furniture.

Is it or is it not furniture?

2026-01-06 21:37:02 UTC

The group worked to determine if the picture is furniture or not. Team members had to say WHY they felt that it was furniture (or not).

Hope Fears and Norms

2026-01-06 21:39:41 UTC

The groups discussed their hopes and fears for our time together. Using these hopes and fears, we created Norms (Rules) for our Winter Academy. Our team was very passionate about giving credit to the original designer of a product!

Brainstorm!

2026-01-06 21:42:56 UTC

During our first snack time to get them thinking about furniture, the team members each came up ideas about furniture that they think we need in our world. ANYTHING GOES!

Dinosaur Design

2026-01-06 21:45:07 UTC

Small groups had to choose a dinosaur. After their dinosaur was chosen, they had to design a piece of furniture to help the dinosaur with it's "problem"

2026-01-13 21:37:58 UTC

Dinosaur Design - H describes the furniture she created for the dinosaur she chose

More Dinosaur Designs

2026-01-13 21:38:53 UTC

A few more designs

Kick-off Video

2026-01-13 21:40:12 UTC

We watched the kick-off video from the Michigan Design Challenge creators

Our Team

2026-01-13 21:41:25 UTC

Meet ...Griffin's Winter Academy 2026

Gaining Empathy

2026-01-13 21:43:23 UTC

Team members put themselves in other people's shoes, thinking about how the problems that people may face in places. This will then lead to how we can solve problems with our furniture designs

Around the World

2026-01-13 21:48:48 UTC

Team members traveled around the classroom, observing images about furnitures in specific situations. They discussed the prompt and wrote down their thinking in their notebooks.

I See...I Think...I Wonder

2026-01-13 21:50:38 UTC

Images of furniture were shown on the screen. The team processed and discussed what we were seeing in each image. This gave us ideas about the many ways furniture is designed and used.

Prepping for the Interview

2026-01-14 19:59:42 UTC

We are going to interview an engineer from Fleetwood Furniture next week. We created some questions that we could ask. The team Dot Voted the

Round 1 Interview via email

2026-02-02 13:51:26 UTC

Due to snow days, we had to complete our first round interviews with Fleetwood Furniture via email. We sent Matt, the top questions the groups wanted to ask. When we met together as a team, we read his answers as the group took notes

Dot Voting for Questions

2026-02-02 13:52:30 UTC

The group came up with so many questions they wanted to ask during our interview process that we used Dot Voting to narrow it down, asking only the most important questions that we needed for our next steps.

Design Studio Stations

2026-02-02 15:41:22 UTC

Stations were set up around the room with different prompts for groups to create furniture. Station 3 Example: Design a piece of furniture to help solve these situations: storage, comfort, help focus, help movement, makes a space safer.

The amount of ideas that came out of this protocol was amazing! This was a new protocol for us and using it helped the group focus on specific needs to address. It really helped them narrow their focus and design for a specific purpose.

The Anti-Solution

2026-02-02 15:46:11 UTC

Students had to think individually how to create the WORST solutions to possible problems. Examples included; I get too hot in my house. My back hurts when I sit too long. I lose things on my desk. My outdoor furniture gets wet.

They then shared these Anti-Solutions. Besides making them laugh, they were able to realize how some ideas just might not work. This then led them to be thinking about what COULD work...

Sort and Saturate

2026-02-02 15:53:32 UTC

Each student had a wad of sticky notes to share with their team! Knowing that many of the stickies may be similar, we asked the groups to sort and saturate their ideas.

Grouping similar ideas together. Then they named the categories - "Outdoor" or "classroom" or "organizing" etc.

Pencil Talk (Chip Talk revised)

2026-02-02 15:58:10 UTC

Once that categories hand been discussed and named, students were given 3 pencils.

Their task was to look at the categories and come up with new ideas that combine other ideas, or begin advocating for an idea that they like. When they took a turn to talk/share, they then had to put one of their pencils in the middle. Everyone had to use all of their pencils.

This is where the beginning solutions were really starting to flush out and new solutions were starting to emerge. This went so quickly, that neither of us had a chance to snap a picture!

Sketching Solutions

2026-02-04 16:16:19 UTC

Both Teams began putting their ideas down on paper. They talked through potential problems and worked out some kinks to their ideas while sketching.

Critical Friends

2026-02-04 16:21:07 UTC

This is a video of one group describing their idea to Matt, from Fleetwood Furniture

Critical Friends

2026-02-04 16:22:12 UTC

Matt and Alan, from Fleetwood Furniture came to talk through the ideas with both groups. They pushed thinking and asked questions like; "how does this solve your problem?"

One thing the groups noticed was that they had "too many problems" they were trying to solve. Matt and Alan suggested narrowing down their problems to solve to come up with a stronger solution/product.

They also gave ideas/suggestions on how to create a convincing pitch to stakeholders!

Spark, Chill, Ignite

2026-02-05 17:21:17 UTC

After receiving feedback from the Business Management students, we came back to the main room and reflected.

Students were given 3 sticky notes each. They reflected individually answering the three questions:

SPARK: What feedback energized or encouraged you?

CHILL: What feedback made you pause, think or feel unsure?

IGNITE: How will you use the feedback to power your next draft?

CTC Visit 1st Presentations

2026-02-05 17:26:28 UTC

Last Minute Details - Work time

2026-02-05 17:29:09 UTC

CTC Tour

2026-02-05 20:13:04 UTC

We visited Culinary Arts, HVAC and the Auto Shop

CTC Visit, Presentation 2

2026-02-05 20:16:44 UTC

After the feedback from the morning, the Spark, Chill, Ignite protocol and lunch, we presented our revised idea to the students in the Pastry Arts program.

TAG Feedback

2026-02-05 20:20:06 UTC

Griffin teams met with teams from Woodbridge in Zeeland to talk through the solutions. They gave feedback to each other in the TAG Format - T: Tell something you like, A: Ask something, G: Give Feedback

Quote

2026-02-05 20:23:36 UTC

2026-02-05 20:28:54 UTC

We worked with Fleetwood Furniture in our Solutions Phase

The Clickables

2026-02-20 13:48:08 UTC

Ryan, Henley, Maria, Madi

The Snack Vac

2026-02-20 13:48:43 UTC

Kenzie, Enzo, Nolan, Natalie

The Snack Vac Images

2026-02-20 13:53:54 UTC

The Clickables Images

2026-02-20 13:59:31 UTC

Critical Friend, Mr Harsay

2026-02-24 16:25:07 UTC

Our former principal, Mr Harsay called into our team meeting to discuss ideas from the groups. He asked them questions that led to final revisions.

Ironically, Mr. Harsay was the person that encouraged Mr. Sweet and Ms. Endsley to participate in Future Prep'd endeavors.

Final Pitch to Families!

2026-02-26 00:12:43 UTC

Both groups presented the process that we went through over the past 8 weeks. Then each team presented their solution. Families asked questions and filled out a feedback from. We plan to meet next week, during lunch, to go over the feedback!