Making at Lighthouse see all posts
Cardboard Boxes Turned into Boxes
“Aren’t we just cutting up boxes so students can build them back into boxes?” I was working with a 3rd grade teacher on a lesson for the NGSS performance expectation:
3-ESS3-1. Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard.
Students were building models of weather-resistant houses from pieces of cardboard. I was busy cutting up a pile of cardboard boxes along the seams when the teacher asked me this question. I paused. We were doing exactly what she was asking about.
Lighthouse School Maker Faire
By Hetgar Peralta, 11th grade at Lighthouse, Intern at the Wonderful Idea Co.
The Lighthouse School Maker Faire is an event that happens every year at Lighthouse around the end of the school year. The students have a chance to present their projects from their classes, to show their fellow peers or any visitor what the student made. It doesn’t matter if your in 4th grade or in 12th grade, if you have a wonderful project, you can attend the Lighthouse School Maker Faire.
Making in 1st Grade: The Cardboard Box Schoolhouse
By Bryan Flaig: At John Gill Elementary, Redwood City School District’s STEAM school in Redwood City, first grade teacher, Joyce K, recently read an informational text to her 1st grade class on the theme of now and long ago. The text compared and contrasted devices people used in the 19th century with the devices we use today. When she finished reading, she asked students, “What items from our classroom would you want to take with you, if you could go back to an old, one-room schoolhouse?” The students were silent. “They just sat there on the carpet, staring at me,” she told me. “No one was talking.”
Vision Quilt: Teens Educate About Gun Violence
Vision Quilt is a volunteer-based, grassroots organization from Oregon. Their members are teachers, business owners, parents, artists, social workers, journalists, retirees and gun owners. Last year, founder and Executive Director Cathy deForest visited Lighthouse and collaborated with 7th and 8th grade students and teachers as they studied gun violence.
Finding Common Ground
Lodestar’s 6th grade expedition teacher Ms. Einhorn spent the first semester working with her students on their expedition: “Common Ground: Building Religious Tolerance through Human Connection”. Each case study in this expedition was built on the other – students started learning about the events of September 11, 2001 and the resulting Islamophobia; then they developed connections among the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The expedition culminated in podcasts written, performed, and produced by the students. More