21st Century Skills: Creating, Collaborating,

Innovating

“Makerspaces provide hands-on, creative ways to encourage students to design, experiment, build and invent as they deeply engage in science, engineering and tinkering.” Jennifer Cooper, Designing a School Makerspace (Edutopia) 1.

1. "Defining Makerspaces: Part 1." Renovated Learning. 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Aug. 2015.

“Makerspaces are collaborative learning environments where people come together to share materials and learn new skills… makerspaces are not necessarily born out of a specific set of materials or spaces, but rather a mindset of community partnership, collaboration, and creation.” Library as incubator project 2.

2. Ibid.

Here is one example of a Makerspace project at CPES. The second grade students were studying fairy tales, and the students were given an engineering challenge: work in teams to build a 3 foot tall tower for Rapunzel out of common household materials such as paper towel tubes, tape, etc. After building the tower, the students shared their thinking about the building process.

Makerspace activities also will give students the kind of experience that will help them become the learner that FCPS has described in their Portrait of a Graduate. Maker activities require students to communicate with the teacher and peers, to collaborate with their partners. As they plan and build and revise their projects, they must be critical and creative thinkers and in order to accomplish their goals. They will have to be resilient as they experiment and revise their ideas through the experience of failure and frustration – they will need to persevere to achieve their collaborative goal.

• Differentiation: Level IV and underachieving students all thrive

• Multiple Intelligences• Iterative – failure leads to revision

to success• Collaborative• Student directed• Cross curricular• Project Based Learning• Aligns with Portrait of a Graduate• Honors Teaching with Poverty in

Mind

• Most activities will be based on upcycled, recycled materials

• K’nex• Snap Circuits• Squishy Circuits• Programmable Lego kits• Little Bits (magnetic circuit sets)• Donations from parents: sandwich bag of Legos,

duct table; recyclables

• Large and flexible community spaces• Maker activities in the classroom can be

extended into library and AAP or Young Scholars instruction

• Allows AART, Librarian and School Based Technology Specialist to collaborate with classroom teachers

• Emphasis in 21st Century libraries is on becoming a “Learning Commons, well beyond “book storage”

• Role models: Camelot ES and Vienna ES

• Kindergarten – create a “sign” (Environmental Print Unit)• 1st grade – design a habitat for animal studied• 2nd Grade: Rapunzel’s Tower Engineering – tied to fairytale unit• 4th Grade: biography project – students made artifacts related to the person studied; how to clean up an oil spill5th grade/3rd grade – create artifacts that exemplify culture(s) studied or create a new culture• 6th grade social studies– inventions to solve problems(inspired by Franklin or when they get to the cotton gin)

• Play to learn week• Mini Makerspaces in

classrooms• After-school programs:

knitting, robotics, coding• Changes the whole-school

culture

• Maker is more than STEAM• Maker starts out best low tech as everyone gets

comfortable with integrating it into curriculum and with the iterative design process and community comes on board

• Use before/after school maker programming to build interest and establish a Maker culture – we need to staff these with staff or parent volunteers of hire a provider (Roman’s Robots)

Collaboration with us• Join the Makerspace Committee• Encourage your child to “make” at home• Donate supplies:• Paper towel rolls, packing materials,

cardboard cereal boxes• Legos• Duct tape• Straws• Popsicle sticks

Formal and Informal

Communities of Learning

Inquiry Tinkering

Messy Learning

Content Creation

Across MultipleSubject

Areas/Interests

Practices of Participatory Learning and

Play