Characters and Laser Cutting with 4th grade

My school library was able to purchase a Glowforge laser cutter! I am so excited to use this with my students. I have been following other makerspaces and libraries doing such amazing projects with a laser cutter and I am excited to try it out! The first project opportunity came not too long after we had the laser cutter up and running. A design project with fourth graders that connected to books they were reading with animals as the main character.

I have a fourth grade teacher who has her students do a lot of reading around genres and then really likes them to do a hands on project that connects to the work at the end. In the past the students have read books with animals as main characters and then had the students make the characters out of clay, here was a perfect chance to use the laser cutter and make some connections with technology and design work.

Students picked their books and then documented different aspects of the story including setting, characters, problem and solution. They also wrote up a profile of the main character of their story. Students documented the different characteristics of the main character and wrote a detail of the characters appearance.

Then, we moved into the design stage. Student were introduced to the laser cutter and how it works. Then we talked about how the they were going to create a laser cut project of the main character. The first step was looking at beginning drawing books, how to draw websites and images. Students would focus on how they could create their animal using different shapes similar to how to draw instructions. Fourth graders drew their plans thinking about shapes and following the ideas from the different resources.

Next, we introduced Google Drawing to the students. We showed them the shapes and lines tools. Students then took the base of their drawings and made shapes to create their animal in Google Drawing. They really had to spend time thinking about scale and size as they laid out their designs, thinking about the size of the different shapes and how they could layer the shapes together to give their character a three dimensional look. After students finished their designs, they separated the shapes on the drawing grid and downloaded the files as .svg. The files were uploaded to the Glowforge Laser cutter and cut out of the wood.

After all the pieces were cut, fourth graders used different materials like felt and googly eyes to add more details to their animals. They completed reviews of the books and displayed their writing with their laser cut animals in the library to share with the school.

This project went really well. The students were really excited about using the new laser cutter in the library. This was also a good opportunity to share Google Drawing and some of the different features of the application. It was also great to have the students think in two dimension and how to take shapes and put them together to make a 3D object. It was a different type of thinking for many of the students and an opportunity for them to mix technology, design and art to make their characters.

Press Here: Simple Circuits with Kindergarten

I've fallen a little behind in my blogging at the start of this school year but I'm committed to sharing more and adding to the blog! Here is my first post for the 2018-2019 school year!

I love the book Press Here by Herve Tullet. It is a wonderful interactive book to read to preschool and kindergarten students. As they read the book, press the different “buttons” and have the next page change it is almost like magic. Over the years the book has become very popular and many of my students have read the book multiple times and have it in their collections at home. This year, I wanted to come up with a plan that added a project or maker connection to the book and the Little Bits simple circuits and button pieces were a perfect fit!

I started by reading the book with my students. I love sharing this book and although many of the students have read the book before they were excited to hear and share the book again. For the first step, students created their own books inspired Press Here books. Using paper folded, students thought about different pages from Press Here and then drew dots on the first page and the action event on the next page. Kindergarteners had so much fun planning, drawing and then sharing their books with their classmates and teachers. They were also excited to take the books home and share them with their families.

The next step was introducing students to the Little Bits circuits (https://littlebits.com/) Little Bits are a great maker tool to use with young students. The circuits are magnetic and color coded so students know how to connect them correctly and in what order. They snap together when lined up correctly. Kindergarteners made connections with the imaginary world of the Press Here book and creating their own press here buttons that did make things move, light up or make sounds. Students worked in small groups to connect the pieces, decide on what they wanted their buttons to do and then adding the red, yellow and blue paper buttons on tops of the different Little Bits circuits. They had a great time testing out different pieces, Little Bits and configurations.

This project turned out great. The kindergarteners loved reading the book and making their own books inspired by the story. Press Here was also a great book to make connections with the Little Bits circuits, collaborative work and experimenting with circuits. It was an informative project, fun, hands on learning for the students and it did not require a lot of setup for the library! This was a good introduction as we advance with our projects and start to introduce more robots, coding and maker projects during the school year.

Stories, Inquiry & Design All Sewn Together

Last summer my school library was renovated and a beautiful design/makerspace was added. I was so excited to have a dedicated space for building and creating. I was really excited for the four sewing machines that we added! I learning to sew when I was younger but I had not kept up with it. I took a summer sewing machine class at a local arts center and I was all set to introduce sewing to the maker projects, I just needed to find the right project! Then I can across the picture book about Harriet Powers, Sewing Stories: Harriet Powers’ Journey from Slave to Artist by Barbara Herkert. This was the perfect book to fit into a maker project because there were so many connections with literacy, history and inquiry, collaboration, technology and maker. I worked with my second graders on this project.

The book tells the story of Harriet Powers. She was born into enslavement on a plantation in Georgia. She grew up learning how to sew from her mother and other women. When Harriet, her husband, and children were freed from slavery after the Civil War they worked on their farm and Harriet continued to make quilts for her family. The family farm fell on hard times and Harriet made the difficult decision to sell one of her quilts to buy food for her family. Harriet continued to make and sell quilts to support her family. Harriet’s quilt art is considered the best examples of this art form from the American South. Two of her quilts have survived. One is on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the other is at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.

After reading her story we discussed Harriet’s life. There was a lot to talk about and think about with this story. We spent time discussing enslavement and the impact of that system on families and individuals. There were a to discuss and work through and I feel my students were very thoughtful and the subject was tackled in a second grade appropriate way.  

Then students examined her work. Using the See/Think/Wonder thinking routine students took a deeper look at Harriet’s quilt work. This routine encourages students to make careful observations and thoughtful interpretations. It helps stimulate curiosity and sets the stage for inquiry.  Students explored Harriet’s quilts and what stories she was trying to telling in each square. We then talked about what the inspiration was for the quilt squares.

The next step was for students to design their own quilt inspired by the work and style of Harriet Powers. Students brainstormed important events from their second grade year. They thought about a special project, presentation, time with friends or moments from the year. Once students picked one event to focus on they started to sketch their quilt square out thinking about Harriet’s style and the idea of telling a story with pictures.

Then students created their quilt pieces in Google Drawing. Students used the different shapes that were available in the program to design and create their pieces. It was very interesting to see how they took different shapes and manipulated them to create their stories. Some students used the lightning shape for hair or the number eight to make a violin. The Google Drawing files were then saved and downloaded as svg files. The library purchased a Cricut cutter for the makerspace. This machine cuts fabric, foam and paper. It was great to use for this project because students were able to design in Google Drawing making it more accessible and possible for them to make the images and pieces that they wanted to.

Students were given three options to choose from for their quilt materials, fabric, fabric paint and sun fabric. The fabric and traditional sewing option was the most popular. For students that picked fabric paint their pieces were cut out in foam and then the mounted the foam to cardboard and used fabric paint to stamp their quilt squares. Sun fabric works by placing paper pieces or designs on the fabric and then putting it out in the sun for 15 to 20 minutes. The fabric that is not covered becomes a dark blue and the parts that are covered stay white. Then the students sewed their sun fabric to the larger quilt square. Then I sewed the whole quilt together to make a collaborative second grade memory quilt that is now hanging in the library hallway.

All the students were able to spend time using the sewing machines and hand sewing. It was amazing to watch how some students took to sewing right away and really got into the craft. All the second graders were really into this project and were so excited to get to work with sewing, fabric and the sewing machines. They were so thoughtful about their questions and observations learning about Harriet’s life and examining her work. This is one of my favorite projects that we did this year!

Students combine Technology, Literature and Art to Make Beautiful Music

During this past school year senior kindergarteners have been learning about coding and programming using the MakeyMakey, Scratch and coding robots. As the school year is coming to a close I wanted to do a combined hands on project that connected with coding, maker, art and literature.

We started with reading the book Drum Dream Girl by Margarita Engle and illustrated by Rafael Lopez. The book is inspired by the childhood of Millo Castro Zaldarriage, a Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba’s traditional taboo against female drummers. The book is beautiful, the illustrations are gorgeous and the text is wonderful and the story is a great. Kindergarteners made connections with the rhythms and sounds in the poetry of the text and the vibrant colorful art of the images. We also had a great conversations about equity between boys and girls.

Next, we recorded audio of sounds of different drums. Students explored different types of drum sounds and picked the ones that they liked the best. Then we created the Scratch coding. Scratch is a drag and drop coding program that kindergarten students have been using this year.

The next step was to make connections with the MakeyMakey. We connected alligator clips to the buttons we coded on the Scratch code. Then I hammered nails into Crayola markers. The alligator clips were connected to the nails. The MakeyMakey needs a home or earth connection that triggers the Scratch coding to work. We connected the earth key to a piece of paper and then sprayed the paper with water to make it conductive making musical markers! When students started drawing on the paper the drums sounds started playing! Kindergarten students had so much fun with this STEAM project!

Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry Part 6, Connections

The last year I have been exploring the use of Imaginative Inquiry with my third grade students. The theme of the year has focused on innovation and connected with the central topic study in their classrooms around the history of the City of Chicago starting with the Ojibwe People up to the diverse neighborhoods of the current city. I have documented in the last four post the theory of Imaginative Inquiry, the introduction of the mission by the mysterious Agent X and the first missions and challenges and the connection with collaboration skills and coding robots.

As I shared in the last blog post the central topic and classroom work focused on pioneer life during the winter months and did not fit with the Agent X challenge. Additionally, in the past I have collaborated with the classroom and the science teachers on a animal research project. This project connected with research skills, the science curriculum and the classroom writers curriculum and we wanted to continue it again this year. I wanted to make sure that the excitement and focus of the Agent X challenge continued as students worked on other aspects of the curriculum. I decided to make a connection with innovation in their animal research and add an Agent X teaser to keep up the mystery.

The animal project looks at how animals survive in their different habitats. How do they find shelter, live together or alone, hunt or gather food, etc. Each student was assigned a different animal and used books, databases and websites to research their animals. We also introduce twitter as a research tool for students to ask questions of experts around the world. Students brainstorm questions they have about their animals that they are not able to find using materials available to them. We tweet the questions out to zoos using a 3rd grade account that the teachers have access to and then share the answers that we receive. The classroom teachers have the students write informational books based on their animal research and the science teacher connects their research to habitats and the work of zoos and creating habitats for animals.

At the end of the research process I made the Agent X connection. In our library we have a large screen that is controlled by a central system. I had a coworker hookup their computer and hide it over by the controls for the system. As the students entered we had them sit at the tables at the front of the space telling them they were going to continue their animal project. When the students were settled at the tables the, my coworker stealthy pressed the start button and the large projection screen mysterious started to drop down from the ceiling and the video started…

This was a good way to keep students thinking about innovation and looking to the animal world to see the innovative ways that animals make use of and adapt to their environments. Students thought about the details and filled out a Google Classroom information sheet with their connections.

The video was a big hit and the students were excited about trying to figure out what the last image had to do with their next challenge!

Up next the Chicago elevated train system, innovation and public transportation!

Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry Part 5: Robots

This school year I have been exploring the use of Imaginative Inquiry with my third grade students. The theme of the year has focused on innovation and connected with the central topic study in their classrooms around the history of the City of Chicago starting with the Ojibwe People up to the diverse neighborhoods of the current city. I have documented in the last four post the theory of Imaginative Inquiry, the introduction of the mission by the mysterious Agent X and the first missions and challenges.

At this point in the school year the discussion that was happening in the classroom around pioneer life did not fit with the theme of innovation and transportation. I did not want to lose the momentum and engagement of the students so I decided to design an Agent X challenge that focused on collaboration and communication skills. The initial application from Agent X stated that those applying for the mission needed to be good communicators and have strong collaboration skills so this was a good connection and would have robots!

The next message students received from Agent X contained details about the challenge. Students were reminded that collaboration and communication skills were going to be essential to the success of their mission and the this challenge was going to focus on making sure that students were developing these skills. The details of the challenge were included. Students were going to work in small groups and needed to create a masking tape maze for a Dot & Dash robot that was at least eight feet long and had a minimum of six turns. Next the students needed to code the robot to move through the maze.

To complete this challenge students would need to design and plan with their groups. They would need to pay attention to measurement and think about the width and distance the robot could move. Students were also given a time frame to complete this mission and needed to plan their maze making sure they could accomplish it during the two weeks timeline.

Next students starting mapping out their plans, measuring and then taping their mazes on the floor. It was interesting to see how the groups worked together. Some groups divided up responsibilities and all worked from different ends of the maze. Some groups assigned jobs, one was in charge of measurements, one taping, one coding and one map reading. Some coded the maze as they went and some groups taped the whole maze and then programed the robots. It was great were empowered to determine how the they worked with each other and negotiated how their group was going to work together and accomplish the task.

This Agent X mission was a success! The students loved the challenge and stayed engaged in the whole Agent X challenge. They worked on their collaboration and communication skills and continued to develop their coding and robotics experiences.

Up next a connection to the animal world!

Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry Part 4: Design Challenge

This is the next installment of my documentation of using Imaginative Inquiry with my third grade students. You can see the first three posts on my blog, (Intro, Part 2, Part 3). Now that my students had completed the research part of their mission to look into innovation and birch bark canoes and how that connected to their classroom studies of the Ojibwe People, they were ready to take what they had learned and see if they could connect it to design.

The next communication students received from Agent X was a large box filled with materials and another letter with instructions about their mission. This mission was a design challenge! Students were asked to think about what they had learned about the birch bark canoe. The canoe was a simple construction using limited materials and was sturdy enough to carry supplies and people across waterways but also light enough to be carried on one person’s back. The students were challenged to make a birch bark inspired canoe, on a much smaller scale. Using the materials in the box, birch bark paper, craft sticks and rubber cement, could the students design and make a model of a birch bark canoe that could float?

There are couple of links to this project beyond the study of birch bark canoes, this also connected to the goal of helping students cultivate their collaboration and communication skills. Students were working in small groups and would need to design and plan together, coming to an agreement of the final plan and work together to build with the materials and if need redesign the canoe to make it float. This part of the project also connected to the buoyancy study they were doing in science. It is always great for students when there are multiple connections to the work they are doing in other areas can be reinforced. This makes the concepts more concrete for students and they are more likely to remember the information and concepts.

Students embraced the design challenge and jumped right into the planning. They were reminded to make sure their design was connected to what they had learned about the design of the canoes by the Ojibwe. They did a great job managing their collaboration and communications with each other and did not require many teacher mediations. The highlight of this part of the project was how excited students were to test their designs and how proud they were when their canoes floated.

The final step to close out our study of birch bark canoes was for students to reflect on some of the challenges and struggles they encountered while trying to build their canoes and the appreciation they gain for how innovative the birch bark canoe was and what a great technological design it was hundreds of years ago.

Next up… collaboration, communication connected to coding and robots!

Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry Part 3: Mission 1

Over this school year (so far), I have been engaging in an imaginative inquiry project with my third grade students focusing on the theme of innovation. Here is a link to my first blog post about the practice of Imaginative Inquiry and the plan. In my second post I shared the next step in the Agent X program, the test students received that gave the first few clues to what their mission might be.

In their mission test, looking at different primary source letters from the 1840s, pieces of birch bark, and paintings depicting Ojibwe People by lakes and using birch bark canoes, students documented details they notices, connections they found between the materials and questions they had about the materials. They were ready to receive their next communication from Agent X.

The mysterious envelope arrived during the next class. Inside was a trifold card that had one of the earliest maps available of the Chicago and Great Lakes area, a picture of the City of Chicago today and a question mark. Students spent time discussing what the clues might mean and what connections it might have to the materials they studied in their Agent X test.

The second envelope included more materials and another letter from Agent X with details about their first mission and the information that they would be learning more about birch bark canoes, innovation and transportation. Students worked in small groups and examined the images of birch bark canoes, watched a video on the making of the canoes and information sheets about birch bark canoes and their role in the Ojibwe People’s lives. Students were also asked to make connections with what they were learning about Native American tribes that lived around the Great Lakes in their classrooms studies. Students documented information that they learned about birch bark canoes and the connections to innovation and transportation.

There was also a collections of maps in the resources. One of the maps was from the early 1800’s and one of today. Students spent time looking at the maps and thinking about why birch bark canoes and water transportation would have been so important. Students used the large touch screen computer we have in the library to add thoughts and ideas to a Google map of the Great Lakes area. This map is an ongoing part of the project. Students will be adding different layers of transportation to the map as they study different types of transportation. The map, hopefully, will be a great visual when students are asked to think about what they have learned from the past and how they might create a transportation system for the future.

Up next: The Design Challenge