SW1 · WEEKS 1 AND 2 · TEACHER ONLY

Design Thinking + Superhero Comics

Week 1 gives students one fast pass through design thinking. Week 2 asks them to carry one hero through a cover, biography, smart gadget, logo, and final four-panel solution. The comic is graded once, at the end.

How the two weeks fit

When	What students do	What they learn
Week 1	Run Ready, Set, Design live or through the interactive lesson. Use Five Chair as a second practice round or flex route. Complete the Xello check-in.	Design starts with a person and a problem. A first idea is something to test, not something to defend forever.
Week 2	Build one paper comic across five connected lessons.	Visual choices, character choices, systems, and cause and effect all have to agree well enough for a reader to follow the hero without a spoken explanation.

Why Matchmaker is in Week 1

The S&S names Personality Style and Learning Style in Week 1. Xello lists Matchmaker as phase 1 and Personality Style as phase 2, so the Canvas check-in keeps Matchmaker, Personality Style, and Learning Style in that order. This is a product sequence. It is not a new learning pillar for the Comics project. Review Xello's current assessment sequence.

If students finish Matchmaker here, do not assign the same quiz again in Week 5. Use that later check-in to review results, save careers, or catch up students who were absent.

The comic has one job per page

Lesson	Student work	Learning piece
1. Cover	Title, hero, and purposeful colour choices	A cover gives a reader the first clues about identity, tone, and audience.
2. Biography	Experience, motivation, ability, challenge, and goal	The same power can lead to different choices. Motivation is what makes the difference visible.
3. Gadget	A labelled smart gadget that solves a specific need	Need -> input -> process -> output. Students trace how the gadget receives information, follows a rule, and responds.
4. Logo	Three small sketches, one final logo, and short design explanations	A useful logo is simple, recognisable at different sizes, and connected to the hero through meaningful symbols and colours.
5. Smart solution	Challenge, hero choice, gadget action, and visible result	A reader should be able to see the cause and effect. The last panel has to show what changed.

Teacher guides

Every teacher guide is unpublished and sits directly before the lesson it supports.

Materials and storage

Ready, Set, Design material bags for groups, or the self-paced interactive route.
Optional Five Chair materials for a second design round or flex route. The Ready, Set, Design guide has the real facilitator guide, deck, worksheet, checkpoint, and materials list.
Three sheets of paper per comic, plus pencils, erasers, and colouring supplies.
One teacher sample with the cover and Pages 1 through 4 labelled.
A storage plan. Collect the comics between classes so five days of work do not live loose in backpacks.

One grade at the end

Keep Lessons 1 through 4 as checks for progress. The completed comic is one 100-point Major grade: cover and visual identity (10), biography and motivation (15), gadget need/function/input/output (20), logo communication (20), final smart-solution sequence (25), and complete/readable submission (10). Drawing skill is not scored.

Optional video and Animation handoff

The Gabrielle Jordan Williams video is an optional entrepreneurship example. Lesson 4 works without it. Use the original TEDx video or copy the reusable Edpuzzle into their own account.

Animation is a separate, optional five-day to one-and-a-half-week unit after Comics. It may reuse the hero, one action, and the visual identity; Animation adds its own plot diagram, storyboard, production, feedback, and export work. Comics is complete after Lesson 5 whether the teacher runs Animation or moves directly to Graphic Design.

Optional portfolio setup

The Portfolio page after Lesson 5 is optional and unpublished. Use it during a flex or catch-up block, assign it in pieces, or save it for a later portfolio week. Move into Graphic Design after Lesson 5 unless you have deliberately added portfolio time.

Before publishing for students

Open the Ready, Set, Design interactive lesson in Student View. Use the live presentation route if the SCORM launch is blocked. If you run Five Chair, test its four copy links from the teacher account that will use them.
Test the Ready, Set, Design worksheet copy link and one sample PDF upload.
Confirm students can reach Xello through the district login route. Then publish the Xello check-in when you assign it in Week 1.
Open all five comic decks and leave each lesson's work-time slide projected during independent work.
Test the final comic upload and six-part rubric in Student View.