The Tikkun Project
Lesson
7
The Accessibility Design Lab: Engineering Solutions
Concept
Being inclusive means creatively redesigning our activities so that modern-day stumbling blocks are completely removed.
Focus Question
What are the most creative and effective ways to make sure everyone can join in a school activity? How do we choose the best and most realistic solution for our community?
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Social Studies, People and Environments: The Local Community, Strand B, B2.6: Evaluate different responses to a localized challenge, considering how rules and structures impact inclusion.
Health and Physical Education, Active Living Strand A, A1.4: Apply social-emotional learning skills to foster positive relationships and safe, inclusive environments for others.
Language, Oral Communication Strand, 1.2: Listen to peers in a small-group setting and build upon their ideas to co-create solutions.
Thinking & Learning Skills
Thinking Skills (Lateral Thinking & Filtering): Generating multiple diverse adaptations for a single problem, then evaluating them against real-world constraints.
Learner Profile Connection (Thinkers / Balanced): Students use creative thinking skills to design balanced, fair play and learning structures for their peers.
Context
The school audit is complete, and the collaborative map is covered in red exclamation stickers marking real school stumbling blocks. Before students hastily pick a random project for their final proposal, this lesson slows them down to practice brainstorming and filtering multiple solutions. This lesson now produces a genuine first-draft proposal, not just a favoured idea the draft is what students will bring to Lesson 8's expert consultation for real feedback, and what Lesson 9 will revise into a final, presentable form.
Lesson Outline
INTRODUCING ADAPTIVE TOOLS
Gather around the mural map, pointing to a red sticker on the playground zone. Ask what might stop a friend who cannot see well from playing a fast game of soccer at recess. Roll a "Beep Ball" or "Jingle Ball" (a ball with bells inside) across the carpet. Explain: by changing the ball so it makes sound, the game didn't have to be cancelled — the stumbling block was removed. Connect explicitly to Leviticus 19:14: using smart, adaptive tools is how we actively remove obstacles rather than accepting them.
ROTATION 1: NAMING THE OBSTACLES
Spread large chart papers around the room, each labelled with a core school activity (playing soccer at recess, silent reading time, solving math problems at the board, listening to a guest speaker, drawing in art class, planting seeds in the garden). In small groups at each station, students write or draw the hidden physical or sensory obstacles that might stop someone from fully participating.
ROTATION 2: BRAINSTORMING ADAPTATIONS
Teams rotate to a new chart paper, consider the previous group's listed obstacles, and brainstorm multiple different solutions. Provide real examples of adaptive technology to spark imagination (speech-to-text tools, large-print books, noise-cancelling headphones, a sensory wiggle-cushion). Students write or draw their solution ideas directly on the chart.
CHOOSING THE BEST SOLUTION
Teams return to their original home station and find a collection of solutions from classmates. Using a four-question filter — Can we do it ourselves? Does it fix the problem? How much does it help? Is it realistic? — groups circle the best solution in green marker and place a sticker next to it on the community map.
Close by connecting to Hachnasat Orechim and the story of Abraham and Sarah's tent, open on all four sides so that no matter who approached, there were no walls or stumbling blocks in the way — choosing solutions that make activities accessible for everyone is opening up the four sides of the school's own tent.
DRAFTING OUR PROPOSAL
After circling their best solution in green marker, groups translate their choice into the first draft of an actual proposal — not just an idea on chart paper, but a specific, written recommendation: what should change, where, and why. Provide a simple proposal frame: "We recommend [specific change] at [specific location], because our audit showed [specific evidence]. This would help [who specifically benefits] by [how]." (Example: "We recommend installing a ramp and Braille signage at the playground entrance, because our audit found a step with no alternative route. This would help a classmate using a wheelchair or a cane enter the playground the same way as everyone else.")
Groups post their draft proposal next to the relevant spot on the community map. Explain that next lesson, a real expert will look at these drafts and help make them even stronger before they go to the principal.
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
The two-rotation structure (name the obstacle at one station, brainstorm solutions at a different one) deliberately separates identifying a problem from solving it — students aren't tempted to jump to the first solution that comes to mind for their own station's obstacle, since they're solving someone else's list.
The four-question filter (can we do it ourselves / does it fix the problem / how much does it help / is it realistic) gives students the same kind of explicit, multi-criteria evaluation used elsewhere in the Tikkun curriculum (e.g., the Fishbone diagram in later grades) — appropriately simplified for Grade 1, but built on the same underlying habit of testing an idea against more than one standard at once.
Requiring a specific, evidence-cited draft — not just a circled solution — is what makes the expert feedback in Lesson 8 meaningful: STOPGAP and Silent Voice can only give useful, specific feedback on a specific proposal, not on an unstated general idea.