FEATURES
PROMOTES INNOVATION AND COLLABORATION 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, it is evident that the new Makerspace 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
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PERSPECTIVES
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.
