Dot Day

The average adult has likely not heard of Dot Day, but in an elementary school, it can sometimes be a BIG DEAL! The Dot, by Peter H Reynolds, is a favorite read aloud for many librarians and teachers.  The theme of the book is that anything could be art with the right inspiration, and anyone can be an artist. Over the past few years, the idea of Dot Day has developed, in which participants create their own dot, much like the character in the book.  They sometimes make the dot into something, or sometimes just make it full of patterns and colors.

This year, Dot Day fell on a weekend (September 15th) so the week prior, and the week following, we did Dot Day activities here in the makerspace and the library.  I read the book to the 2nd through 4th grade classes, and then we discussed how "anything might be art" translates into our makerspace work.  The kids consistently came up with "anything might be built".  We then looked at a cotton ball through as many different eyes as we could, brainstorming what else it could be.  So much creativity! When I read the book to the K-1 classes, they could choose between drawing a dot on paper with pencils, crayons, or markers; or they could create their dot on our paint program, called Tux Paint.  These kids never fail to surprise me with how creative they are!

Enjoy our Gallery!

New Year, New Look

Wow it's been a long time since I've posted here.  There is so much new stuff going on at Summit that it's time go get the blog going again! 

This year our district has redesigned my position as part of a district wide commitment to increase the emphasis on science and engineering instruction in the elementary and intermediate schools.  We are adopting a new science curriculum, and my face-to-face time with every class has increased to once a week for 60 minutes and then every other week, an additional 30 minutes.  The GT and tech trouble-shooting roles have been handed to someone else, so that we can all focus on our one area of expertise. 

During our time in the library, students at all grade levels will be working on digital citizenship and online safety, as well as learning how to navigate the library, and checking out books.  The kindergarten, first and second grade will be spending a lot of time on the foundational skills on the tablets and computers, including an extensive coding unit and video production/digital storytelling.  The third and fourth graders will be doing a lot of project driven learning, integrating the technology and coding with the design thinking process that they will design under my guidance.  I am excited to see how this goes this year, and excited to see the enthusiasm of the kids as we get into the routine!

Learn Deep

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to meet with individuals from Learn Deep, a company working to bring innovative learning into schools of all levels throughout the greater Milwaukee area. We met, along with teachers from South Milwaukee High School and Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and a representative from the Betty Brinn Children's Museum at the e-Cycling center at Goodwill of Southeastern Wisconsin, in Greendale.  The purpose of this meeting was to start conversations about how school/museum/library makerspaces can partner with Goodwill e-cycling to re-purpose some of the parts that arrive at the recycling center into projects.

The goal is to easily get these parts into the hands of schools looking to start makerspaces or supply existing makerspaces.  This was a great reminder to me that there are lots of community partnerships that could be formed between schools and organizations looking to unload equipment they no longer use, but want to keep out of the landfills.  It is so important that those involved in makerspaces get involved in these conversations so that organizations know what we could use in our spaces.  Stay tuned as Learn Deep moves forward with this project.  It will be a great way to help all schools grow innovative learning for their students.

Coding Projects

An annual favorite of mine is the coding project unit that the fourth graders do.  They spend a few weeks learning Scratch, and then they design an activity that uses coding to control, move, animate, draw, or narrate something.  Their ideas are always so creative, and the results are very impressive.  This year's fourth grade group exceeded my expectations for what they planned and designed.  Enjoy looking at some of their projects:

Home-made Drum Set

Homemade Guitar

Digital Artwork

Lego Mindstorms Vehicle

Sphero Soccer programmed to cheer when the they make a goal

Interactive Games

Talking Zoo

Musical Marble Maze

Squishy Circuit Conductive Dough Game Controller

Battling Beasts with WeDo

Narrated T-Rex

Amazing what 9 Year Olds Can Do!

Recently the 3rd graders were working on choice projects based off of research using the Wonderopolis site.  I have decided that it is much more fun to teach research, note taking, citing sources, and effective searching when integrated with high interest topics and student choice both on topic and project type.  And this group in particular came up with some great projects!  Looking at them, it's hard to believe these are 9 year olds!

Here are just a few of their awesome projects:

Website Updated

Weve been fortunate to get all sorts of new goodies this year in the makerspace, thanks to generous grants from Donor's Choose, 3M, and our Summit School PTO.  As a result, our website, which is used for teaching, learning, planning, and project galleries, needed an upgrade.  And finally I can say that it is finished (till we get more new goodies and have to upgrade again!! - not a bad problem to have!)

Check it out!

Summit Makerspace

Building Challenges

Sometimes you just need to take a brain break.  That's what last week was for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classes.  Kids participated in one of 6 different small group building challenges during their library/tech time.  It was a great opportunity, also, for conversations about group work dynamics, working through challenges, and focusing on the process, not the product.

More pictures of our fun are available on our Facebook Page