“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…
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…
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…
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.
At the culmination of a month-long 3rd and 4th grade Expedition on Natural Occurrences, the Creativity Lab developed two making projects based on Housing and Civil Engineering. Collaborating with 3/4th grade teachers, the Lab created two design challenges focusing on earthquakes and tsunamis, natural occurrences relevant to the Bay Area and California.
One of the many variations of Lodestar compared to traditional schools is that our Elementary Making, Art, & Design teacher, Ms. Ortiz, instructs mixed age groups, with students from kindergarten up to 3rd grade. This construct can make teaching structured lessons difficult in a classroom where students’ ages range from 5 years old to 8…
In our ongoing meeting of Portfolio Development and Career Pathways, we planned a Presentation Day for Middle-School during our School Assembly, and finalized a Portfolio Feedback Day for our High School Students.
With Lodestar just starting out at its current site, building up functional and quality maker spaces can prove challenging. We want to create spaces where maker-centered learning shines, in which students can lead activities and teachers can facilitate collaboration, co-inspiration, and co-critique. Additionally, we want to model other facets of maker-centered classrooms, which are outlined…
At Lodestar, the academic year is underway, and with the innovative structures that we are implementing, there is always iteration, all the way down to the level of the structure of our lessons. Across the school, and especially in the Making, Art, and Design classes, we want to jump right into making and tinkering, to…
To Engage Students and Teachers, Treat Core Subjects Like Extracurriculars Lighthouse Community Public Schools were featured in an article in Mind/Shift by Leah Shaffer. Read more.