Pitch and Gallery Walk

Standards

Enduring understanding and essential question

Big idea: A design is finished when the client says yes. The pitch is where the designer proves the room solves the client's problem, in the client's words, in one minute.
Essential question: Can you sell a room to the person who has to live in it?

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. (Low) Given the pitch planner, state in sixty seconds the client's need, the plan, the budget total, the color and mood, and the green and safe features.
2. (Mid) Give another team written feedback that names two things the design does for its client and one specific step that would do more (two stars and a step).
3. (High) Score their own project on Rubric 04 with one line of evidence per criterion, within one level of the teacher's score.

Vocabulary

Tier 2 (general academic): pitch, evidence, feedback, critique, specific
Tier 3 (FACS): client, design brief, mood (from Lesson 4.9), gallery walk, self-assessment. See Vocabulary 04.md for Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Materials and setup

• Handout 04.15 - Pitch Planner and Feedback Slip.md: the pitch planner (one per team) and the feedback slips (four per student, cut)
• Rubric 04 - Design a Room.md, the copy each student received in Lesson 4.11, for the self-assessment row
• The models, plans, Budget Sheets, and client cards set out on tables, one station per team, with the client card face up
• The do-now floor plan stacks (Lessons 4.10 to 4.14), stapled by each student, turned in today
• A visible sixty-second timer
• A clipboard sheet with the five pitch parts as a checklist, one row per team
• Slides: Slides 04.15 - Pitch and Gallery Walk
• Setup notes: arrange the stations before class so no two teams with the same client card are next to each other. Assign each team a "client" for the pitch: a student from another team who holds the client card and listens as that person. [Sal: if a period has an odd number of teams, you are the client for one.]

Pre-assessment

The Day 3 self-check on criterion 4 from Lesson 4.14 and the exit cards tell you which teams need the first ten minutes to finish labels. The pitch planner's first two lines (the client and the need) are the same sentence students wrote in Lesson 4.11; a team that cannot fill them has drifted from the brief.

Do now and hook (Time: 5 min)

On the board: "Write the one sentence you will say first to your client. It must name the client and the need. Then write the number you are proudest of on the Budget Sheet." Two minutes. Two students read theirs.

Hook: "In one minute, the client decides. Not because they read your Budget Sheet. Because you told them, in their words, that this room solves their problem. Sixty seconds. Go."

Also today: staple your do-now stack (every floor plan sketch from Lesson 4.10 to yesterday, in order, name on the first sheet). It is turned in with the project.

Procedure

Questions to ask

Monitor understanding:

• What was the client's need, in one sentence? Did the pitch say it first?
• What was the budget total? Was tax in it?
• Which part of the pitch was missing, if any?

Deepen learning:

• The client asked a question the pitch did not answer. Which is worse: not knowing the answer, or not thinking the client would ask?
• Two teams designed for the same card and made different rooms. Can both be right? What decides?
• You saw twelve rooms. Which would you want to live in, and is that the same as which one best served its client?

Check for understanding

The clipboard checklist during Steps 2 and 3: a yes or no for each of the five pitch parts and one for "every teammate spoke." Five yeses and every teammate speaking is a Meets on criterion 5 before the self-assessment is read. A no on part 1 (the client and the need) is the first thing to name on the rubric notes line.

Closure (Time: 3 min)

Self-assessment: each team fills the self-assessment row of Rubric 04, one score and one line of evidence per criterion. Then the turn-in stack, in this order: the client card, the Needs and Wants List, the plan, the Budget Sheet, the rubric with the self-assessment, the feedback slips from the cup, and each student's do-now stack. The model stays on the shelf. One sentence aloud from two students: "The step I got that I agree with is ___."

Differentiation and supports

• ELL: the pitch planner is a five-box card with an icon per box (a person, a plan, a dollar sign, a paint chip, a leaf and a shield) and a sentence starter in each; the picture pitch card in Project 04 - Design a Room.md lets a student point to the plan and model while a teammate reads the line; sentence starters in Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish on the project sheet, marked [check with a native speaker]; a student may pitch in the home language with a teammate translating, and the five parts are scored on content, not accent.
• IEP and 504 (general): a student may read the pitch from the planner; a student may pitch to the teacher alone at the station instead of in front of the half-class; the feedback slip has checkboxes for the most common stars and steps beside the write-in lines; extended time: two slips instead of four; a student who does not speak in front of others owns the feedback slips and the self-assessment evidence lines, which are part of criterion 5.
• Grade 6 support: pitch three parts (the client and the need, the plan, the budget total) and two feedback slips.
• Grade 8 stretch: answer two client questions instead of one; on the self-assessment, write which rubric level the model would reach if the budget were cut to $250 and what would go first.
• UDL checkpoint used: multiple means of action and expression (a spoken pitch, a read pitch, a pointed picture pitch, or a pitch to the teacher alone all count) and multiple means of engagement (a classmate plays the client and asks a real question from the card).
• No-kitchen or no-machine alternative: not a lab; no alternative needed. A team with the isometric drawing instead of a model pitches from the drawing and the plan the same way.

Assessment

The whole project is scored on Rubric 04 - Design a Room.md after today: criterion 1 from the Needs and Wants List and the pitch, criterion 2 from the plan, criterion 3 from the Budget Sheet, criterion 4 from the model and the Day 3 clipboard check, criterion 5 from today's clipboard and the self-assessment.

Homework

None. Optional: tell someone at home about your client and the room in one minute. Ask them the one question the client would ask. Write it down; the Unit 4 Test on day 115 has a client scenario.

Connections

English language arts: the sixty-second pitch is a persuasive speech with a claim (the room solves the need) and evidence (the path width, the total, the label); the ELA teacher can use the pitch planner as a persuasion outline. Community: a local interior designer, architect, or contractor as a guest client for one period, asking the questions, is the best version of this lesson and sets up Lesson 4.16 [Sal: your Brentwood contacts or your school's parent network].

Sources

• NYS Middle Level CTE FACS Content Module 04, Environmental Design and Management (nyctecenter.org, June 2018), lines 2. c) and 3. a). Copy in 02 Standards/NYS Module PDFs/. The module's Problem Solving and Innovation illustrative activity (a gallery walk to critique tiny house designs, naming elements admired and proposing alternatives) is the source of the gallery walk and the two stars and a step slip.
• NYS Middle Level CTE Theme Module, Communication and Interpersonal Relationships, line 1. f). Same folder.
• NYS Learning Standards for Health, Physical Education, and Family and Consumer Sciences (1996), Standard 2, Intermediate. Wording per 02 Standards/STANDARDS SOURCES - web research.md, section 2. [Sal: confirm against the NYSED PDF.]
• National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences Education 3.0 (LEAD FCS Education, 2018), competencies 11.6.4 and 11.6.5, per 02 Standards/STANDARDS SOURCES - web research.md, section 4.11.
• Sal's own materials: the sixty-second pitch and gallery routine from the $40 project (Unit 1, Lesson 1.21) and the "design statement" and "personal reflection" prompts in education_teachingwork_dream_home_challenge_2026_04.docx.

Teacher notes

• If the period runs short, cut the gallery walk to two slips per student and take the self-assessment as the first five minutes of Lesson 4.16. Never cut the client's one question; it is what makes the pitch a pitch and not a report.
• Common mistake: the pitch describes the room ("the bed is here, the desk is here") and never says the need. Hold to the order: need first. The clipboard has part 1 first for a reason.
• Common mistake: feedback slips that say "cool" or "nice colors." Read one good slip aloud before the walk and one bad one (made up). The rule is a feature and a client.
• Twelve pitches at sixty seconds plus a question is about eighteen minutes; the split rounds keep the room from sitting still for that long. In a class of more than fourteen teams, run three rounds of six minutes each and shorten the planner time.
• [Sal: your Orangetheory sales background is the pitch lesson. The line "the client does not buy the room, the client buys the problem going away" is yours to say.]
• Keep the models on the shelf until after the Unit 4 Test; the review game in Lesson 4.17 uses them.