ADST PROJECTS - A Home for Who

A Home for Who

Grades 5, 6, 7 | ELA, Math, Social Studies, Art Education, ADST

Learners take on the role of designers or real estate professionals tasked with creating the perfect home for an unusual client. For this example, each group is assigned one of five familiar Halloween character archetypes, such as a vampire, witch, zombie, ghost, or werewolf. Before building anything, students investigate their client's characteristics, perspective, needs, preferences, and potential challenges.

Learners then translate that understanding into design decisions as they plan and construct a multi-level model home using a shoebox and classroom materials. Rather than following a universal checklist of what every house must contain, students must be able to explain why their particular design works for their particular client.

The project culminates in students presenting their home and justifying how specific features respond to the needs of its resident.

🌟 Adaptability: The project can be adapted to different grades, subjects, and real-world contexts by changing the client and design challenge. For example, older students in Grades 6 or 7 could investigate housing needs within a community and undertake a tiny-home design challenge, creating a small, functional living space for a specific person or group. The context changes, but the central design challenge remains: understand who you are designing for and use that understanding to make purposeful, defensible design decisions.

How it supports the curriculum

Big Ideas

ADST: Designs can be improved with prototyping and testing.
Supporting connections can be drawn from ELA, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Arts Education as appropriate to the particular implementation.

Content Connections

ELA: Character development, perspective, inference, communicating ideas, and providing reasons/evidence for design choices.
Mathematics: Measurement, dimensions, proportion, spatial reasoning, and ensuring that architectural features and furnishings relate appropriately to one another.
Social Studies: Relationships between people, place, environment, community and housing. This connection can become significantly stronger in adaptations involving authentic community housing challenges.
Arts Education: Visual communication, form, colour, texture, material choice, aesthetics and craftsmanship.

Curricular Competencies

Understand a user and identify their needs, requirements, and design constraints.
Generate, plan, and prototype solutions that respond to those needs.
Test ideas, gather feedback, and improve their designs through iteration.
Safely and purposefully use materials, tools, and digital technologies.
Create and share a final product, explaining and reflecting on their design decisions and process.

Classroom Things Needed

Technology: iPads or Chromebooks

Services: Google Classroom, Seesaw

Materials: Shoeboxes and Craft Supplies

Teacher Skills needed

👉 Note: We can help build your confidence with all of these skills before and during the project!

Seesaw: Familiarity with using Seesaw for photo and video documentation and reflection.

Student Skills needed

👉 Note: Just like the teacher skills, we can help build students' confidence with all of these skills before and during the project!

Google Classroom: Navigate Classroom confidently, find assignment, hand in work.

iPads: Take photos and short videos.

Seesaw: Post things on Seesaw.

Project Outline
Duration: 8-12 Class Periods

Phase 1: Understanding Context

Students are introduced to the design challenge and assigned a Halloween character as their client. They explore the character’s traits, behaviours, perspective, preferences, and challenges to identify what that individual might need from a home. This establishes the ELA connection through character analysis, perspective, and inference.
Documentation Milestone: Capture the group’s initial client profile and identified needs.
Reflection: What does our client need from their home, and what makes us think that?

Phase 2: Ideating

Students translate their understanding of the client into design possibilities. They connect character traits → client needs → potential design features, while considering common project requirements and constraints. Multiple solutions are encouraged; there is no single “correct” home for any character.
Reflection: How does this design idea respond to something we know about our client?

Phase 3: Planning & Prototyping

Students develop a measured floor plan or design sketch before construction. They consider layout, multiple floors, doors and windows, furniture, materials, and proportion while identifying how important features respond to their client’s needs.
Documentation Milestone: Photograph the initial plan or prototype and identify key design decisions. This creates a record students can return to when documenting later changes.
Reflection: Which feature of our plan is most important for our client, and why?

Phase 4: Testing & Making

Students construct their model home over several work periods. As they encounter problems, test ideas, and receive peer feedback, they revise their original designs. The emphasis is not simply on completing the house, but on recognizing how testing and iteration can improve a design.
Documentation Milestone: Capture construction progress and document at least one meaningful iteration:
Original idea → Problem or feedback → Change → Why it improved the design
Reflection: What changed from our original plan, and why did we make that change?

Phase 5: Sharing

Students take on the role of designer or real estate professional and present their finished property. Rather than simply showcasing the house, they explain who their client is, identify important needs, and justify how specific design features respond to those needs.
Documentation Milestone: Capture the completed home and the final presentation or property tour.
Reflection: Which feature best demonstrates that this home was designed specifically for our client?

Phase 5: Reflection

Students review their initial plans, photos, videos, documented changes, and final product to consider how their thinking developed throughout the project. A final Seesaw reflection brings together evidence from across the design process. Possible reflection questions include:
- How did understanding your client influence your design?
- How did your design change from your original idea?
- How did testing, feedback, or unexpected problems improve your design?
- How effectively did your group work together as designers?
- If you could create another version, what would you change or improve?

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