Step 5: Navigating Ideas

Step 5: Navigating Ideas

Whew! You have been doing some serious work to challenge your thinking and learning about waste and trash and the impacts our decisions can have on the planet near and far away from us.

In the book LAUNCH they offer a great brainstorming process found on pages136-137, but it is time for students to sketch out and map their ideas.

What idea are they going to go with to help showcase an answer to the question?

What will the final product be?

Who is the audience?

What are the roles of the group? Who is doing what and when?

What tasks need to be completed and when?


These are just some of the questions you will want to have students think through and plan before they move into action!

Classroom Activities


You can use the PARTS framework shared in LAUNCH or your own methods, but this is the stage where the students will map out their plan. This is where they think through all they have learned and now need to complete the planning process of what it will take to get the work done on time to seek the necessary feedback from those involved.

There are many methods to do this. As educators share their methods we will post them here.

Lesson Plans and Slides

  • Slides
    • Navigate ideas, creating a prototype, and highlight/fix, are all combined in these slides because these take the biggest chunk of time. I put them together so you can move freely between them. You might groups at different stages depending on how their research, prototyp building, and revision processes take.
    • Be sure to allow plenty of time for them to work in these stages.
    • Be sure they have time to test their ideas for effectiveness if possible before sharing with the workers.