JULIE and MBACHI'S CLASS NOTES

The new year is off to a great start for our class. We began last week thinking about problems that inventions solve and came to the conclusion that all inventions solve problems, but not all inventions solve problems having to do with or that lead to social change, equity or peace. Some do, however, such as the washing machine. We discussed the focus of our invention work, which will be to invent (or design or redesign) something that can have a positive social impact.

To increase our understanding of what some of these problems might be, we looked at the two images above. In small groups, students identified differences between the picture on the left and the picture on the right.

Finally we generated vocabulary words that could accompany both images. Surprisingly, some of the same words, such as fair, even, and equal could apply to either picture. In these cases, we had to think more deeply and find out more about what was equal. Each person may have the same number of creates in the picture on the left, but they are able to have the same experience in the picture on the right. We will continue these conversa- tions so the students can eventually identify a problem they would like to address in their invention work.