Compiled by Kato Nims, Lower School Director of Studies
As educators, we are constantly designing and redesigning student experiences in order to deepen and connect learning across subject areas and disciplines. Through collaboration and intentional innovation, Lower School teachers find ways to partner together to design learning experiences that celebrate the joy of learning while helping children make critical connections in understanding the world around them.
After just one year in the Lower School Makerspace, located in the Hance Lower School Learning Center, it is evident that this new space is a tremendous asset for our children. Our faculty and staff continue to push forward in their mission to provide learning experiences that keep our programs at the forefront. I asked a few teachers to share why they value the Makerspace, along with examples of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Ownership of the process, ownership of the result
Tim Moxley, Lower School educational technologist
The experience for a student in the Makerspace is typically one of freedom. They quickly realize that it is not an ordinary classroom environment. Children make decisions and plans according to tool and material needs. They productively struggle to manually create a physical representation of some abstract vision that they have constructed in their imagination. Accompanying an ownership of the process comes an ownership of the result. Good or bad. Children learn that more time and effort put into the planning stage of a project usually results in a better product. They learn how to ask a peer for help. They learn firsthand that everyone has a different set of gifts and abilities. Children realize, maybe for the first time at school, that they are talented artists or craftsmen. Whether it be an extension of a classroom project or something of the student’s own choosing, the physical product itself is of least importance. The real learning happens with the planning, struggle, failure, and resilience that accompanies the creation process.
Bringing fairy tales to life
Anne Pace, kindergarten teacher
Every fall in kindergarten, children learn the concepts of print, story elements, and retelling skills through our study of emergent storybooks. One of our favorite stories in this unit is The Three Billy Goats Gruff. In the Makerspace, children build bridges for the billy goats using cardboard, pipe cleaners, and hot glue guns. Then they practice retelling the story with their handcrafted bridges and classroom billy goat puppets. Our classroom bellows with sounds of goats and trolls as the children unknowingly practice the important literacy skills of retelling, sequencing events, and taking the perspectives of different characters. By bringing The Three Billy Goats Gruff to life, children deepen their learning and understanding of storytelling concepts.
The sound of DIY instruments
Emily Maxwell, Lower School music teacher
During their time in music, Lower School children have many opportunities to learn about percussion instruments. When a new instrument is introduced, we discuss the materials used to make it, the ways to play the instrument, and the origin of the instrument. By second grade, children are familiar with a plethora of instruments from around the world. The Makerspace allowed me to design a lesson plan that tapped into the children’s creativity. Using their knowledge of the characteristics of various instruments, I challenged the second graders to create something new that could be their own. Some were excited to get to work, while others were really challenged to not simply copy an instrument they had seen before. Through trial and error, the children persevered and came up with some very innovative designs that they proudly shared with their teachers and classmates.
Seeing the beauty in abstract faces
Nehal Morejon, Lower School art teacher
Last year, third graders studied two artists, classical and modern, known for using abstract faces in their work. In the art studio, the children worked on 2D portraits influenced by Picasso’s cubism style. First, they drew with pencil then filled in their pictures with oil pastels. We also incorporated warm and cool colors using colored tissue paper to embody mood and emotion for the background. The children loved representing their emotions and their different sides through their portraits, and there was wonderful conversation throughout the lessons about their feelings and how they represent themselves through art.
We then moved to the Makerspace to learn about Kimmy Cantrell, a ceramic artist who lives in Georgia. He makes interesting abstract faces with clay and celebrates our imperfections as signs of strength and beauty. The children designed an abstract face influenced by both artists and then shaped a model using corrugated cardboard, tape, yarn, and other materials. One of the challenges for the project was to make the parts of the face move. Mr. Moxley and I taught them how to use tools correctly to make slots and mechanisms for moving facial features. The children were so creative, energetic, and engaged in helping each other problem solve.
This project was highly successful as the children loved the extension and collaboration of two creative spaces in the school. It is important for the children to learn how one area of learning connects to another, and that helps them to realize the many possibilities they have to branch out.
Documenting creativity
Martha McKaughn, fourth-grade teacher
Last fall, fourth graders worked in the Makerspace to bring their fall documentary project to life using green screen software on their iPads. Why green you ask? A special shade of green is the go-to color because it does not match any natural skin or hair tone, which ensures an actor will not be edited. This software frees up a child’s creativity by allowing him or her to film a video with a transparent background. Once the video is complete, a digital background can be inserted in creative ways to match the message they wish to convey. The background can be anything from a weather map, a jet racing across the sky, or the set of a newscast. Teachers are always learning too! We discovered early on in production that the screen needed to be set up in a quiet and closed space so there were no extra sounds or distractions. And we added microphones to the speaker for better sound. The children had a lot of fun and pushed their creativity through this project.
Rise to the forefront and support teachers and programs like these.