City Planning: Systems Thinking with Kindergarten

 When planning projects for my kindergarteners I always look for themes that are of high interest with that age group, and have lots of books and research resources about the topic and ways to integrate technology and building projects. The goal is for this to be a months-long project. For the first several months of the school year, the several times a week I see kindergarten the focus will be on this theme and projects. In the past, I have focused on the solar system, oceans and habitats. This year the idea was cities! I was hoping the topic of cities and breaking down the systems of cities would help to build a foundation for my younger students to understand all the components of a city and how essential a well designed and throughout city can be a benefit to the people who live there. This project has become one of my favorites and the students had so much fun, retained so much information and made so many great connections.

The project started by introducing the idea of cities as a system and thinking about all the different parts and systems that connect to make a city function and work together for the people who live in the city. Students would dive deep into different systems in the city, read books and do research on the different systems and then engage in a building project about that system. This format allowed for the exploration of different types of research materials and information gathering and then for students to take what they learned and make and create something new.

In the story studio of my library there is a large bulletin board that takes up almost a full wall. This wall was where I collected all of our information and added visual images of the different systems that students learned about. I started by adding green paper on the bottom half for land and blue paper on the top for the sky. I then added a large “Welcome to SK City” sign. When students entered the library on the first day they saw the sign and were super excited and curious about what they would be learning about.

Transportation:

Transportation was the first system that we explored. We started the project by reading a variety of books that featured different types of transportation. Students talked about all the different types of transportation they are familiar with and see around the city in their daily lives. We then took a walking "field trip" to the city street just outside the doors of the library. During this short walk out our front door and around the corner, students were able to identify dozens of parts of a transportation system. Students pointed out cars, buses, scooters, taxies, delivery trucks, parking meters, cross walks, stop systems, stop lights, and more.  We took lots of pictures of a;; the parts of the systems that students identified. I printed out the pictures of the different parts and added them to the bulletin board along with roads, train tracks and sidewalks.

After reading The Last Stop on Market Street, students thought about the public transportation system and buses. We talked about public transportation systems in our city. Students talked about the CTA buses and the “L” train system. Then they imagined different buses they would design. Students brainstormed different bus designs and then drew out their plans for their buses. Some of their bus ideas included: a library bus so riders had books to read, a double decker bus with a glass dome and plants so people could enjoy nature on their ride, and a stuffy bus filled with stuffed animals to cuddle during the ride. The pictures of students’ buses were added to the wall. Images of CTA buses and trains and different train stations in the city were also added to our bulletin board. Students also mentioned other transportation parts to add, water taxis on the Chicago river, airplanes and O’Hare and MIdway airports, divvy bikes and scooters as well as cars.

After making connections with the transportation systems they viewed in our own neighborhood and thinking about buses they would design, senior kindergarteners worked on mapping out a transportation system using robots. Working in small groups, students had a large sheet of paper, markers and miniature traffic signs. Students talked about the different systems they needed to add when planning their transportation map. They used markers to draw out the different paths and added miniature signs to mark cross streets and add bike paths. Then they tested out their systems with Ozobot robots. The miniature robots follow the path of the markers and move around their transportation maps to test if traffic could keep flowing.

Housing:

Next students looked at housing. We talked about and learned about the different types of housing we see in the city of Chicago, including apartment buildings and houses. We shared that housing is an essential system because everyone needs a safe place to live. We read two books. The first book, Going Up, is a book about all the neighbors in an apartment  building coming together to celebrate a birthday in the community. Then we read If I Built a House, a silly story about a character named Jack and the amazing, creative over-the-top house he would build. We added images of different types of houses in Chicago to our SK City board.

Parks: 

Next, kindergarteners explored parks! Students started with reading two books. The first book was Water at the Park, a delightful story about all the people and animals that use the park on a hot summer day. Students noticed the families with dogs there early in the morning to get exercise, the families with young children there in the morning to play, adults on lunch breaks getting some sun and fresh air. Students also enjoyed the part in the book where families went back to the park after dinner for some play and exercise before bed, and one last visit from the dogs before the city went to sleep. The second book, Chalk, is a wordless picture book about children using their imaginations and using chalk at the playground to create amazing images that come to life. Students then shared their experiences at parks, parks around our school, parks in their neighborhoods, what they love to do at the park, and talked about why parks are important to a city or community. They made connections with the need for parks so people have open spaces to spend time in nature, places for children to play, and green spaces for animals.

The next step, students looked at images of innovative parks around the world. They explored pictures of a pirate themed park in London, England and a Godzilla themed one in Tokyo, Japan. Then, I shared a short video tour of Maggie Daley Park right here in Chicago. Students talked about how different materials were used to make fun and imaginative spaces for kids to play.

Next, students took a virtual field trip to Millennium Park in Chicago. I found 360 virtual reality videos tours of Millennium Park including the famous Bean statue and ice skating on the ribbon in Maggie Daley Park. The videos were short and students used the Google VR viewers for a short period of time. This was a fun and new experience for kindergarten students to gather information and learn about a park and to take a field trip, something we would not have been able to do physically.

After exploring and learning about existing parks in Chicago and around the world. Kindergarteners took on the challenge of designing the parks of the future! Working in small groups, students planned, designed and built prototypes for new parks. They collaborated and used all different materials, from cardboard to egg cartons, pipe cleaners to streamers to build amazing prototypes of parks that had climbing walls, ropes, water features, and more for kids to play. They also designed rest spaces for people to take a break and plenty of green spaces and trees for all the animals that live in the city. The park prototype designs were put on display in the library for people to see.

Business:

Students explored businesses and how important businesses and services are to a community. I started by reading three books. The first book, Top Job, follows the story of classmates sharing the jobs their grownups have, including one child whose parent changes the light bulbs at the top of the Empire State Building. The next book, All Through the Night: Important Jobs that Happen at Night, shares the story of all the jobs that happen when many of us are sleeping, and how those jobs are essential to keep a city working.  The final book, How Did That Get In My Lunchbox? A Story of Food, follows items in a lunchbox from farm to factory to store, and all the jobs and people that are necessary to fill up our lunchbox. Senior Kindergarteners kept a list of all the jobs they noticed in the books and then added to it to all of the jobs their family members have, all the different jobs they notice at the school, and jobs they see in their neighborhood.

Next, students thought about what job they would have in SK City. Students drew pictures of their job in the city. I found images based on each student's job. Then, using the green screen and the green screen app Do Ink, each student recorded a short video sharing where they work. Pictures of SK students and QR code links to their videos were also added to the SK CIty bulletin board in the Story studio.

Schools and Libraries:

Kindergarteners explored libraries and schools next. We started with reading two books: No Cats in the Library and Splat the Cat. In the first book, a cat finds its way into the library and keeps getting sent back outside. Soon the librarian realizes that the cat is a wonderful listener and is invited to stay and be the library cat. The next book follows the story of Splat the cat who is very nervous for his first day of school, but soon learns so many amazing things and has such a fun day at school that he cannot wait to go back.

Students then talked about why libraries and schools are important for communities. They shared that libraries are important places to get books and learn new things. Students pointed out that schools help students learn math and reading. They also shared that both schools and libraries are places to meet new people and share ideas.

Students used the coding app Scratch Jr to create stories about schools and libraries.  They coded characters to start in a classroom and then coded characters to move to the library to find new books. During this project Kers built on their knowledge of coding. They learned new blocks including how to send messages between characters to trigger new code, how to make characters disappear and reappear, and how to use end blocks to move from one scene to the next. Students learned how to add multiple lines of code on one character and how to add code loops. This was a great way for students to make connections with what they read about and make connections with new code blocks.

City Planning and Map Making:

The final step of this project was city planning! Now that senior kindergarteners spent months thinking about cities and systems that cities need to be healthy, safe and welcoming spaces for people, it was time for them to be city planners.

I started with reading the book Mapping Penny's World. In the book, the main character learns all about the different maps and the different parts of a map, including the map key.

After reading the book, students did a short map making activity. Working with a partner, students spread out in the library ro make simple maps with a key to different spaces in the library.

After reading the book and practicing their skills with map making, students worked in small groups to map out and create their neighborhood in SK City. They started with roads, sidewalks, train tracks, water and parks. Then using different colored cardboard cylinders for the different buildings, students created wonderful SK City maps. All of the neighborhoods were placed together and are on display in the Story Studio in the library for everyone to enjoy.

This project went so well and made so many great connections. Kindergarteners were able to think more deeply about the world around them and understand how systems work and need to work together. They were also able to think about how to think about how systems need to work for the people living in cities and how they can design with other in mind. This project also made great connections with books, databases, virtual reality and other resources as way to learn and collect new information. Students were also given many opportunities to learn with and from each other. They made connections with what their classmates said during discussions and then in many of the small group building and designing opportunities in this project. Technology was woven into many parts of this project. The stages and steps of the project were shared with the larger community through displays in the library as well as website that was shared with parents. So many of the AASL collaboration standards were woven into this months long project with great success.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Research, Google Draw and Laser Cutting

When lesson and project planning, one goal is try and make as many connections I can with the curriculum and topics that are happening in the classroom. The focus of the third grade curriculum at my school is the city of Chicago. Students spend much of the year looking at the history of the city and making connections with what they see and know about the current systems of Chicago.

In my curriculum, I take the angle of innovation and Chicago. So many innovations, technologies and industries have their roots and foundations in the city.  For the first big project of the year in the library and makerspace, the topic is architecture. Chicago has such a rich and exciting architectural history. Chicago was home to the first skyscraper in the world and continues to build amazing buildings and spaces. Chicago was also home to Frank Lloyd Wright. This project started with an exploration of Frank Lloyd Wright and then some laser cutting!

The project started with reading and learning more about Frank Lloyd Wright and his uniquely American style of architecture. Each class read the book Prairie Boy: Frank Lloyd Wright Turns the Prairie Into a Home by Barb Rosenstock. This picture book biography shares the story of Wright’s life as well as how he was inspired by the prairie to design and create prairie style architecture. As a class, we talked about what they noticed in the book. Some of the observations included the use of shapes, the connections with Wright’s childhood and his architecture and how changes in the world inspired him to design for a new world.

Next, students took time to look at images of three of Wright’s most famous buildings in the Chicago area. Third graders watched tours of the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio, the Unity Temple and the Robie House. As students looked at pictures and watched short video tours they documented connections they made with what they learned in the book and what they saw in the buildings. Students then learned about the Coonley Playhouse windows. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Coonley School in Riverside, IL. In addition to designing the school, Wright designed a series of colorful stained glass windows for the kindergarten playroom in the school.

Students looked at images of the windows and made connections with what they learned about Wright’s style. I also talked about how Wright wanted to create a space that was for young learners. As a class they made connections and collected ideas about why they thought the windows were designed for young learners. They talked about the colors and shapes Wright used and how they looked playful and would spark imagination. Then I asked third graders to think about the young learners at our school, the junior and senior kindergarteners. For the final step in this project, third graders were asked to be designers for our youngest learners.

Thinking about what they learned about Frank Lloyd Wright, his designs and especially the Coonley Playhouse stained glass windows, students were asked to design stained glass windows for our youngest students. Using Google Draw, third graders use different shapes and arrange them into different designs. Third graders spent time arranging and rearranging shapes to make imaginative windows. Then, I used the library’s Glowforge laser cutter to cut out the shapes from black chipboard to make sturdy windows. The final step was for students to add different color tissue paper to finish their windows. The windows were put on display in the library hallway and shared with junior and senior kindergarten students.

This was a great combination of research projects and hands-on experience for third graders. They were able to take information they learned from multiple resources: books, photographs and videos, to make connections with Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style design. Then, they took on the role of a designer and thought about how they would design imaginative windows for younger students at the school. This was a great project and a wonderful way to start the year long student of Chicago through the lens of innovation.

Fall Colors and Talking Leaves with Preschool

 The school I teach at starts in junior kindergarten, or preschool. Students are four years old when they start the school year. This presents many challenges for designing projects. Students are so young when they start. The beginning of the school year is focused on students adjusting to the structure of school, transitioning to different spaces and learning about the library space. For the first several weeks of school, the library is a more traditional storytime and time for the students to find books to check out. Once the junior kindergarteners are more settled into the school year, I introduce projects connected to what we are reading and learning that take several class sessions to complete. This year, I started with a project connected to fall colors, seasons changing and talking leaves!

The project started with reading several books that talk about the changing seasons. We read: Leaves by David Ezra Stein, Hocus Pocus It’s Fall by Anne Sibley O’Brien and Old Bear by Kevin Henkes. With each book students shared what connections they made with the story including noticing the leaves changing colors around the city, activities they do with their families during fall like apple picking and pumpkin carving and what they know about how animals start to prepare for the winter. Junior kindergarteners also made connections with the colors and pictures in the books. The illustrations in the book all had the colors red, yellow and orange, all colors that they see around the city and the neighborhood during the fall.

After reading the books and making connections with the topics and what they see in the world around them we moved to the project. In my library program, we focus on weaving technology in and finding ways for students to see technology as a tool to share their voices and knowledge. When students are so young, technology is introduced sparingly and with intention taking their developmental age into consideration. For this project, the app Chatterpix was shared. This app is a simple and fun app that allows users to add a mouth to a picture and then record their voices.

Each student picked the picture of the fall leaf they liked the most, red, yellow or orange. Then they drew a mouth on the leaf and recorded their voice saying “My favorite fall color is _____.” The junior kindergarteners giggled and laughed so much hearing their voices come out of the leaves! After each student recorded their talking leaf, the videos were uploaded and a QR code was generated. The final step was printing out the QR codes and attaching them to a leaf. Then I created a “JR Talking Leaf Tree”! I attached the leaves to a fake light up tree and displayed it in the school hallway so that students, teachers, families and other community members could scan the QR codes and hear all the leaves talk!

This was a great first project from my youngest students. The junior kindergarteners were able to engage in a project and make connections with the information they learned and shared over several weeks. Students were also able to use their own voices with a new piece of technology to start to make connections with the idea of technology as a way to share their ideas and knowledge. The final project share out was a public display that highlighted the youngest students in the school’s work.

Game Building with Scratch, MakeyMakey and AI Images

 Artificial Intelligence is such a big topic in education right now. Should students or educators use it at all, what are the guidelines and rules that should be instituted? How do you talk to students about AI, when should you start? As the technology becomes more accessible it feels more and more important to start talking about and sharing the positives and negatives of AI with younger students as well. When students are in middle and high school they will have a better understanding and foundation on how AI works and how it can be a tool for them to use and when it is the appropriate time to use it if they have a foundational understanding of AI. With my fifth grade students I found a way to weave AI into a current project and give students the opportunity to play around with the tool and have some experience using AI.

In the past I have done a design and coding project with students using Scratch and Makey/Makey to make a video game and working game controller. There have been different themes that students have been given over the years, based on the big overnight camping trip they go on every year, designing a game for first graders connected to SEL topics and more. This year, I decided to make the connection to using the AI tool in Canva.

I started out the project asking students what they know about artificial intelligence and how it works. Many of the students had a basic understanding that AI is machine learning, that the program learns more as it collects data. We talked about the benefits of AI and using it, how it is a tool that can be helpful with planning, understanding materials and structures. We also talked about the limitations and negative aspects of AI, how it can be biased and racist. When computers learn from humans the program can learn positive aspects of humanity and all the ugliness of humanity as well. Then I introduced the project and how we would be using an AI tool to help with our project.

I shared that students would be making and designing video games using Scratch coding. The theme for the games would be random picks! In one basket I had an animal or object and in the second basket I had a location or place. They would randomly pick from each basket and that would determine the ideas that would need to be included in their video game design. Each student picked from each basket and had themes that include mushrooms and Paris and hotdogs on the rings of Saturn and elephants at the pyramids. Then I introduced the Canva AI tool. My school has an institution subscription to Canva, students are able to login with their school email accounts and use the Canva AI image generation tool.

The Canva tool allows you to input different words and descriptions for the image you want to generate. Students played around and tested it first, seeing that the more descriptive words the more detail was added. They also noticed that no matter how many times or how many different ways they tried to describe what they wanted the image just did not come out the way they wanted, this helped them to better understand some of the limitations of AI. Students used their keywords and the Canva AI tool to generate images for their backgrounds and characters for their Scratch coding games.

Next, students logged into Scratch and started a new program. We walked through the different types of games they could code, including a chase and avoid video game or a capture video game. I shared with students how to upload their AI images and edit them in Scratch to be their backgrounds or their characters. Students had some Scratch coding experience, as the project progressed, they learned more code blocks and built their knowledge of how to make their games work. Students had several class sessions to make their games work, adding code, testing and debugging their code to make their games.

The next step was to connect the Makey/Makey and build their game controllers. Students were reminded how a Makey/Makey works, that they need to complete a circuit by using conductive materials, wire, alligator clips and a human to make their controls work. Students then designed and built their game controllers. Some students designed their controllers to connect to the theme of their games, others were inspired to make theirs look like real game controllers. Fifth graders tested the controllers, made sure their wires and connections worked and made any corrections they needed to get their game controllers up and running.

The final step was the whole class sharing out! Students set up their games and connected their controllers and they were ready for the 5th grade video game share out extravaganza. Students went around the room playing their classmates games and offering positive feedback on each other’s games.

Overall this was a wonderful experience and project. Fifth graders were able to use AI in a setting and experience that allowed them to explore the technology in an authentic way and use the work that was created within a project that was their creation and creativity. They also continued to grow and expand their coding skills and reinforce the idea of ideation, prototyping, testing, and then if something does not work going back to ideation, prototyping, testing again.