We recently had our annual King of the Hill competition with our 12th grade Physics students! Each year our Physics students build mousetrap cars as they begin to study forces and motion. The first round of cars don’t work very well; the students don’t really know yet what it takes to make a durable and…
Projects using toys are immediately engaging for students, and can provide surprising learning opportunities. Our first grade class had a whole unit on toys; they took apart toy cars to learn about how they worked, built tops (while learning some basic physics concepts), and designed new toys from scratch using a variety of materials.
As we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, we have been partnering for a while now with Agency by Design (AbD), a research group out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero. As we dive in to this work, we’ve been exploring ways that making not only creates space for play and creativity in…
For the past month, the 3rd grade classes here at Lighthouse have been exploring a unit on electricity during science. While many lesson plans have students end a unit like this by exploring with and making real circuits, our teachers Lauren Hofmayer and Zoe Sylvester have decided to flip this on it’s head by having have their students…
In this new feature, we will give a quick summary of the different Making projects happening each week throughout the school. We will also spotlight specific projects in more detail in other posts. Read on to learn about all the ways our teachers are integrating Making into our classrooms! The kindergarteners continued a woodworking unit during their…
A couple of weeks ago, Kerri Frederick at La Escuelita Elementary asked us for help setting up their Maker Space. They are another school in the Oakland Unified School District that is partnering with Maker Ed’s VISTA program, and had expected to have two VISTAs arriving before the school year started.
Fun fact: here at the Creativity Lab, Making isn’t just about making things. Making is also about learning to see the world with new eyes, and developing deeper knowledge and understanding of the world around us. One of the ways we incorporate this idea is through using Agency by Design’s thinking routines. Educators can easily integrate these routines into any subject — even those not typically associated with making, like the Humanities. The first routine, called Parts, Purposes, and Complexities, (PPC) is a great one to start with, and is applicable to physical objects as well as abstract ideas and constructs.
We have two new AmeriCorps VISTAs at the Creativity Lab; they started in the second week of August. Their first day was half-way through one of our Professional Development workshops, and it’s been full steam ahead ever since! Lighthouse is thrilled to have them here, and we hope you enjoy their contributions here on the blog.