“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 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…
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…
As described in my previous post on the evolution of the Lodestar Lab Makerspace, we have started the introduction of project kits, which are portable tinkering activities that have proved ideal for our site! These kits developed after months of brainstorming and planning – determining appropriate activities, sourcing materials, and testing out the projects. In…
Here at Lodestar, our structure is continually evolving – there are always areas we can improve upon to better serve our students. The Lab makerspace is one of them. Initially, we planned to keep the makerspace inside of the K-3 Learning Lab, with one area devoted to free making, and another to independent kits. However,…
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.
Our kindergarteners are some of our biggest makers at Lighthouse. They make year-round, usually with sewing and woodworking (using handsaws, clamps, drills, and hammers). Now, they are in their second week of testing out a programming unit, and so far it looks like it’s going pretty well. You may recall my Turtle Art posts from several months back. This new…
In the weeks to come, we are focusing on Maker Faire prep, but I’m also working on an updated project guide for scribble machines. It would be nice if I could fit this project guide to the template I just created for Turtle Art, but we’re talking about two very different kinds of projects. The Turtle Art project guide…
In a perfect world I’d sit them all in two long rows, facing each other, scissors in hand, able to look up, across, or over for help and we would walk through cutting tightly curved lines. But what world is perfect anyway? Welcome to making with first graders. As a fun introduction for making Making…
I have spent the last nine months deeply submerged in Making (in School). When given the opportunity to share what I’ve seen, I never feel I can share enough, perhaps because the nature of the idea of “Making in School” itself is so grandiose. There are so many facets to it, so many ways to…