Wednesday’s Smoothie Fair was a fantastic celebration of creativity, collaboration, and real-world design. As part of their MYP Design unit, our Grade 9 students worked through the full Design Cycle to create unique and appealing smoothies tailored for a younger audience — our Grade 5 and 6 students (and of course any teachers willing to try!).
From identifying user preferences to researching ingredients, testing recipes, and refining their final product, the Grade 9 designers applied each stage of the Design Cycle:
Inquiring and Analysing: Researching flavours, nutrition, and preferences that might appeal to others.
Developing Ideas: Sketching logos, writing product descriptions, and planning their recipes.
Creating the Solution: Preparing their smoothies, ensuring hygiene and presentation were top-notch.
Evaluating: Using feedback forms and peer votes to reflect on how well their product met user needs.
The younger students played the role of target users, tasting each smoothie, giving structured feedback, and casting a final vote for their favourite.
This authentic, user-focused experience not only highlighted the importance of empathy in the design process, but also gave our Grade 9s a valuable opportunity to present, receive feedback, and refine their ideas based on real user data.
Well done to all the student designers for such thoughtful and professional work — and thank you to Grade 5 and 6 for being engaged and honest testers! You will see that there were also some teachers in there testing the smoothies too. I know that I certainly had a favourite smoothie and a favourite advertisement!
For many of your children and our students we have exams coming up. This message was shared from a Principal in Singapore and it is a timely reminder to us all:
We know you are anxious for your child(ren) to do well.
But please do remember, amongst the children sitting exams
- There is an artist who doesn’t understand Maths.
There is an entrepreneur who doesn’t care about History or English literature.
There is a musician whose Chemistry marks won’t matter.
There is an athlete whose physical fitness is more important than Physics.
If your child does get top marks, that’s great! But if he or she doesn’t, please don’t take their self-confidence and dignity away from them. Tell them it’s OK, it’s just an exam! They are cut out for much bigger things in life. Tell them, no matter what they score that you love them and will not judge them. Please do this, and when you do, watch your children conquer the world. One exam or a low mark won’t take away their dreams and talent. And please, do not think that doctors and engineers are the only happy people in the world.