During an Applied Design Skills and Technology (ADST) class at the Junior School this month, Grade 2 students were introduced to Caine’s Arcade, a short 2012 documentary about a nine-year-old boy in Los Angeles, California who created an incredible cardboard arcade with few material resources.
Inspired by Caine, and in anticipation of the Grade 2 Celebration of Learning–where family members are invited to the Junior School to see and celebrate students’ hard work and growth across the year–students were given the following challenge:
Imagine you are an arcade game designer and your grown-ups are coming to school for a special celebration. There will be an arcade full of free games that everyone can play– but we have to make the games!
Additional project requirements included:
- Assuring the portability of the game
- Considering user experience and context (simple concept and rules)
- Coming up with a name that describes the game.
During ADST, students use the Think-Make-Improve design process as they work through different phases of a challenge or project. In this case, after brainstorming different kinds of arcade games, each student drew a plan detailing the kind of game they wanted to build, as well as the tools and materials required to do so. Students were partnered and given access to flattened cardboard boxes as well as any iLab materials that could support the realization of their game.
Soon, the Makerspace was bustling with collaborative energy. Students using tools such as cardboard saws, rulers, canary cutters, awls and perforation wheels were cutting, folding, taping, screwing, and poking cardboard to make new shapes and configurations. They upcycled netting and tape rolls for basketball hoops; cardboard tubes for marble tracks; tongue depressors for pinball paddles. They repurposed paper clips and magnets for claw machines and old toys for prizes.
Of course, you can’t improve something without testing it, so students played their games, swapping scotch for duct tape, adjusting the angle of a ramp, replacing broken parts, adding or removing challenges. Days before the Celebration of Learning, students were filing into the iLab on their recess or lunch breaks to finish and refine their work.
Finally, on May 16, after sharing a year’s worth of growth and learning, family members of all ages were invited to take part in a student-designed cardboard arcade. “Blazeball”, “Monster Crash”, “Luck Ball” and “Mr. Claw” were just a few of the games on display and ready to play. Other students shared incomplete games, asking loved ones for feedback and suggestions to integrate during a final work session.
And while making an arcade sounds like– and is– a lot of fun, my hope is that Grade 2 learners will find opportunities to refine and apply the collaborative problem-solving skills and perseverance that come from making a plan and adjusting expectations, from making messy mistakes and fixing them. I hope, too, that they’ll grow ever more confident in their capacity to imagine, invent and design for a better world.
