Take place in or could be used in grades 6-8.
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…
Quarter 1 just ended at Lighthouse. See what Ms. Dobras’ 7th and 8th grade making class have been up to!
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…
I’ve been working on an updated project guide for Turtle Art (coming soon), and it’s inspired me to do a follow-up to my previous Turtle Art post, and talk a little about why we like Turtle Art to begin with. We use Turtle Art not only as an introduction to programming, but also as a tool for…
For one of their first projects of the trimester, our seventh and eighth grade makers have been journaling—not writing in journals (though, they’ll be doing that, too), but making journals of their own. The making began by unmaking. Like biologists with their frogs, students dissected books to explore their inner workings. (We have some potential…
Summer making in the Creativity Lab was wildly successful. It lasted 5 weeks and taught more lessons than can be contained in one digestible blog post so here are a few bites-sized morsels: The impact of concentrated making over time on students is visible. The results include increased confidence, creativity, and resourcefulness. Talking about what…
Over the last three weeks I have watched one of our regular drop-in makers, Yarely (a 4th going on 5th grader), go from making very simple, crafty, step-by-step projects for kids to making projects that blow away her 7th and 8th grade summer making peers. I bring this up for two reasons. First, when a…
What’s a hackathon, really? Until fairly recently, I didn’t have much of a clue. Reading up on one taking place in Oakland, I figured the weekend-long event would be an opportunity for middle school students at Lighthouse’s Creativity Lab to be exposed to programming and software development. Explaining that to my 6th graders using words…
Families engaged in creative play together – an outcome we want to build as we integrate making into our school’s practices. Recently our fourth grade teachers invited their students and families to engage in creating scribbling machines, circuit boards, and a little bit of tapigami. Scribbling machines are fun – they instantly engage people to…
Our middle school students have teamed up with Hamilton + Aitken Architects to collaborate on a five-week-long project that has two major goals: first and foremost, we want to introduce our young designers to the concepts and practices that make up building and space design; secondly, students are working to generate ideas and input for…