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…
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…
For the past few months, Lodestar had the opportunity to partner with the Wonderful Idea Co. (WICO), a local organization that hosts trainings and develops interactive, hands-on exhibits for makerspaces and museums. With the help of a generous grant from Cognizant, we’ve been able to offer our school as a testing location, where WICO can…
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,…
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…