Students Designing for Students: Cross-Grade 3D Printing Projects that Build Community
What happens when students use their design skills to create for someone else in their school community? In this guest blog, Linda Dimitrov from the Anglo American School of Sofia shares how cross-grade 3D printing projects connect younger students with older student designers, creating authentic design experiences while building relationships across the school.
17th August 2026 • Tips
Hi PrintLab community! This is Linda from the Anglo American School of Sofia in Bulgaria. We are a medium sized international school with students from Preschool to Grade 12. Community is something important to our school. Ensuring students, staff and parents feel welcome and enjoy a sense of belonging are fundamental values that we all strive to build and uphold. Cross grade learning opportunities are wonderful examples of building understanding across the years.
I teach middle and high school design and technology electives class and use PrintLab to help students learn Tinkercad (in middle school) and Autodesk Fusion (in high school) for designing for 3D printing. Today I’ve been invited to share how we apply those skills through multi grade projects where older students have younger students as “clients”.
The Idea
As part of a community building idea we run projects where older students design for younger ones. The focus is on creating an authentic design experience for both the designer and the client and as such building bridges between grade levels. It is an opportunity for the older students to get to know some younger community members, develop some understanding of their needs and likes and to create something for someone else – their client.
The younger students benefit from coming to the Design and Tech centre in the upper school, uncovering another place on campus that they don’t use yet and thus a sense of excitement about moving into middle school where they have access to the workshop and design spaces. They also enjoy meeting their “designers” and feel special to be listened to and understood by older students. Some high school classes are held in the elementary school building so students have the opportunity to run into each other in the hallways.
The Projects in Action
Currently we run two cross grade projects and have plans to add two more. One of our projects is a bubble wand project where grade 6 students meet with their kindergarten clients and design wands for their buddies. The second collaboration is between the high school class and grade 5 where the high school designers create a keychain fob that communicates some kind of special memory from their client’s elementary school experience and is presented to the fifth graders at the Moving Up (to middle school) celebration. We come together for an initial meeting and design discussion where the students talk and draw together.
The older students then design and refine over several prototypes.The conclusion of the bubble wand project is the kindergarten clients coming back over to see the Grade 6 designers and a delivery of the wands. The students then enjoy time together blowing bubbles. (It’s important that the 6th graders also have wands). Prior to delivering the fifth grade Moving Up keychain fobs, students write their client a short note which they tie to the keychain, finalising the gift.
Why This Works
We have noticed that student engagement increases significantly when there is a younger student to care for or about. The students want to learn not only about how to create a product that the client will enjoy and use but also about how to communicate with the younger students. We spend some time developing conversation starters and questions that can be asked to help foster the connection between designer and student. The designers gain real experience in the importance of understanding the client and which questions work to generate the information needed. We provide the opportunity for the information to be collected both in the forms of drawings or sketches and text.
Especially with the kindergarten students, the drawing happens together and creating the drawings together also provides conversation points. The grade 5s are often excited about moving to middle school and so much of the conversation focuses around understanding some of the poignant moments in elementary school and how to commemorate those in the key chain fobs. It is salient to note that the designers often feel a great responsibility to create what their clients want and at times need encouragement that they are actually skilled enough to do so. We think this is an incredibly valuable part of the collaborations – a developing sense of responsibility to other community members.
Challenges
Timing of the projects can be challenging and benefit from careful planning. The most successful collaborations occur when the designers see their clients receiving their product and testing it. The current high school class and grade 5 collaboration lacks the hand-over moment for the high schoolers as the grade 5s don’t receive their keychains until the actual Moving Up ceremony which the high schoolers do not attend. We need to consider ways to close the feedback loop to the high schoolers so that they see or hear the response to the final designs.
Accounting for student absences when the designers and clients meet is important by developing a system for collecting the information for the designers. We send the design documents back with the client teachers and they generally find a way to get the missing student information back to us. We’ve also found that it is really useful to share the student names with the designers before assigning clients as often they know students from buses or family connections and the designers like to work with students they already know a little bit. Keeping track of changes to who is designing for whom is important especially if the designers need to work with multiple students.
Reflection
I’ve loved watching these projects develop and become a regular part of the learning process each year. I am always so impressed with how the older students rise to the occasion by showing interest in and caring for the younger students. The younger students inevitably bask in the attention given them by the older students and future hallway, playground or bus encounters reflect the joy in seeing a “buddy” from another division. This project based approach gives an authentic reason for applying the design cycle to developing a real client based project. The older students know they are making something real for someone real, that they need to use the initial meeting to obtain important understanding of the client and that they will refine the product through several iterations.
We’ve decided to increase the high school grade 5 connection by doing a beginning of year project as well as the end of year project – although this doesn’t solve the issue of closing the loop at the end of year, it creates an opportunity to develop relationships across divisions earlier in the school year and to revisit them later in the year. I strongly recommend cross grade collaborations for building or strengthening a sense of school community and hopefully some of the ideas we’ve shared will be useful to others wanting to try something similar.
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A huge thank you to Linda for sharing this inspiring approach! Cross-grade projects are a fantastic way to give 3D design and printing an authentic purpose, while helping students develop empathy, communication and client-focused design skills along the way.
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