NSF Awards: 1657755
The Maker Movement provides a project-based approach to STEM education that integrates curriculum standards across STEAM subjects. The Master Teaching Fellows Academy at College of Staten Island partnered with Staten Island Makerspace with the goal of improving science teaching at elementary schools in order to engage all students in learning science in meaningful and relevant to them way. The Makerspace mission to “expose the children in the community to careers in science, engineering, and new technology because they are pathways out of poverty.” aligns very well with the goals of our NSF project. In the first year of our project, we worked closely with the staff of Makerspace to educate MTFs about Maker Movement and how to create Makerspace in their classrooms. As part of this professional development, MTFs had two sessions at the Makerspace where they planned and tested the projects they designed for their students. This year each MTF is bringing their students to Makerspace to complete the projects they designed last year as part of standards-based science curriculum. Starting next year, as our MTFs are learning how to become science leaders, they will be preparing to deliver their own professional development workshops at the Makerspace for the teachers in their schools, therefore expanding this experience to all students in title I schools involved in our program.
In this video showcase our MTFs will share their experience at the Makerspace and impact of this experience on teaching and learning science.
Irina Lyublinskaya
Professor of STEM Education
Thank you for taking time to watch our video! We are very interested in your feedback, especially in regard to the following questions:
Zhanna Fridman
Rebecca Lugo
Mikhail Kurnosenko
Dermot Donnelly-Hermosillo
Nice video Irina, Sharon, Jarra, and Rebecca. The Makerspace looks great. I am curious if objects made within the Makerspace are tested outside the Makerspace? For example, if students make a Doodle Bot, is there an opportunity to test it based on some variables (area covered, distance travelled, etc.) afterwards? Also, do you support iterations to designs and how? Thank you!
Irina Lyublinskaya
Sharon Cameron
4th Grade Mathematics/Science Teacher
Thank your Dermot for your support of our work. My fourth grade class visited the MakerSpace on a class trip. At The MakerSpace my students worked in groups to build tipping bucket examples. They draw their models and decide where to place the holes in their buckets in order to make the bucket example tip. If their examples failed, they were given an opportunity to redesign and retry the experiment. In class, they continued experimenting and redesigning. My goal is that they will gain experience and confidence to take the project idea and expand on it to solve an environmental problem.
Dermot Donnelly-Hermosillo
Irina Lyublinskaya
Jarra Dandrea
5th Grade Special Education Teacher
Hi Dermot!
Thank you so much for viewing our video. I chose to design DoodleBots with my students so that they can work through the Engineering Design Process, test variables in order to improve them. My students take their DoodleBots back to the classroom to troubleshoot, add to their designs, and test some variables such as; length of markers, amount of markers, speed of motor, weight of cup, and some students add objects to their cups to either weight them down or guide them as they are drawing. At the end of this process there are a number of iterations of the DoodleBot so that students are able to refine and perfect their designs to their liking. Do you see other ways in which DoodleBots could be used in the classroom?
Thank you for stopping by!
Dermot Donnelly-Hermosillo
Irina Lyublinskaya
Deirdre Reilly
Great Job Jarra. It was nice to see our groups DoodleBot video in action! My students also continued to explore their Doodle-Bots design in the classroom. The class changed their design with a variety of materials and then show cased their work. It was wonderful to see my students collaborate their ideas and troubleshoot new materials to create Doodle Bots with a different function.
Irina Lyublinskaya
Kristen Reed
Senior Project Director
This is a great project! I know several schools in my community are developing their own makerspaces and lessons to go along with them. Do you have a way that you'll be sharing the lessons that teachers developed? How are you measuring success of the program? Thank you!
Irina Lyublinskaya
Irina Lyublinskaya
Professor of STEM Education
Dear Kristen,
Thank you for your interest. One of our goals is to help teachers to bring making to their own classroom. We hope to gather these lessons and we are waiting for our college to setup a website for us (our college has transitioned to new website this past year and it took 3 years to do, so we do not yet have our own place on the website). When all these logistics are resolved, we hope to provide access to these resources.
In order to measure success, we are collecting STEM attitudes surveys from the students in our MTFs' classrooms. We also collect science grades for 1st and 4th marking periods. Our qualitative data include curriculum materials developed by MTFs and we have short videos from their classrooms.
Rachel Garrett
Senior Researcher
Those looks like some engaged students in the makerspace! I was curious how the visits to the makerspace can be positioned within a teacher's set of lessons/a curricular unit, and whether teachers are provided supports to situate the makerspace visit within their broader instructional work?
Irina Lyublinskaya
Irina Lyublinskaya
Professor of STEM Education
Dear Rachel, thank you for watching our video. I am going to answer part of your question and leave it up to my co-presenters to answer teacher-specific part.
Last year during our first year of the program we developed and taught graduate course "Science experiment design in elementary school". This was a course specifically designed for our cohort of Master Teaching Fellows and in this course we really focused on supporting our fellows in development of experience for their classrooms where their students can design their own science experiments. Our fellows started with short activities where students would be provided a problem or a question, and would develop their own procedures to answer questions/solve problems with available materials. That was introductory steps to making in the classroom and we primarily focused on how to make sure this becomes part of standards-based curriculum and not just after school activity or a project that was irrelevant to the curriculum. Makerspace projects were developed in this course with support from our faculty as well as through discussions and collaboration among the MTFs. This year our MTFs are implementing this projects with their students, and I would like to let them share how they made connections to their curriculum.
Thank you for your interest!
Rebecca Lugo
K - 5 Science/Coding Cluster Teacher
Hi Rachel! In order to position our makerspace visits within our units, we had to first consider what content the students had to learn before being able to apply their knowledge as makers. For example, in our first grade class we were focused on standard 1-LS1-1, in which students had to use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs. After we taught a number of lessons where students explored different types survival structures, we were able to bring our students to the makerspace to apply their knowledge to a human problem. Before teaching the unit, we also had to plan it out on the calendar so we could schedule the trip appropriately.
Sharon Cameron
Irina Lyublinskaya
Sharon Cameron
4th Grade Mathematics/Science Teacher
Hello Rachell,
Thank your for your response to our video. I my case, one of the standards I focused on was standard 4-PS3-2, Make observations to provide evidence that energy is conserved as it is transferred and or converted from one form to another. I started the unit with first visiting The MakerSpace. I shared my lesson plan and prototype with the Educational Director at the MakerSpace and she helped me to plan for my class trip. After our trip, my students worked on their redesign, and the subsequent lessons which included observing and connecting their knowledge of energy conversions.
Irina Lyublinskaya
Waveney Hutson
My son was One of the first Stem Student when that program started and I knew that the program had a capacity to do great for our children. It creates a new world for the children to emerge into, while it also develope their imagination.
Jarra Dandrea
Sharon Cameron
Irina Lyublinskaya
Rebecca Lugo
K - 5 Science/Coding Cluster Teacher
Thanks for your encouraging comments, Waveney! We completely agree that this type of learning helps students develop their imaginations and broaden their horizons. Thanks for watching!
Irina Lyublinskaya
Sharon Cameron
4th Grade Mathematics/Science Teacher
Thank you Waveney for sharing, I am sure that you must be very proud of your son's growth and development as a result of his STEM experience. I agree, STEM education gives our students an opportunity to take risks with their imagined ideas.
Irina Lyublinskaya
Cynthia Callard
Executive Director/Professor
I really enjoyed this video and seeing your work "in action" with students and teachers! The Makerspace seems to have a lot of potential for engaging teachers and students in STEM activities! My question is similar to Rachel's in that I'm wondering how the Makerspace activities are fitting into a larger instructional unit? In our MTF project we are spending significant time to support our fellows in designing units using "Understanding by Design" (Wiggins & McTighe) so that they are thinking at the "big idea" and unit level, and I wondered how your project was thinking about this. I am also curious about whether there have been shifts in teachers' practice in science or mathematics lessons that are not connected specifically to the Makerspace? Is that a goal? Thank you for sharing!
Irina Lyublinskaya
Irina Lyublinskaya
Professor of STEM Education
Dear Cynthia, we are also using UbD as framework for our instructional unit design. MTFs engaged in unit planning using UbD during our first graduate course I described above. This year year we are using UbD framework to support instructional planning in connection to the second graduate course "Big Ideas of Science" and in year 3 we are focusing on curriculum unpacking and instructional planning again using UbD. So far after 2 years we see significant shifts in teacher's practice towards inquiry-based curriculum, towards giving students more freedom to ask their own questions, to design their own procedures, and to adjust their designs. We are using Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) for assessment and we have external observer coming to the classrooms to observe science teaching. Our analysis shows significant improvement in MTFs abilities to design & implement inquiry-based lessons.
Staten Island Makerspace is our partner and we plan that in years 4-5 our MTFs will be ready to lead workshops for their peers at Makerspace to learn how to utilize their resources to support science teaching. We are not looking at this as extra-curricular, but our whole focus is to find ways to integrate that into standards-based curriculum. We are also looking at ways teachers can use making or even setup Makerspace in their own classrooms.
Euisuk Sung
Great project! I love to see your valuable work, particularly bringing young kids to the makerspace and providing them with "authentic" engineering experience. As a former formal educator, I am really curious how school educators use the elements of maker education in the school because the maker movement was initiated from out of school. We are doing similar project that our partner schools invite engineers and ask them to work with young kids. But, there exist some barriers that engineers are not ready to teach young kids in terms of teaching skills. On the other hand, they might have natural skills and knowledge obtained from authentic engineering which should be taught to our students. Likewise, do you think that the maker education can go to schools?
Irina Lyublinskaya
Irina Lyublinskaya
Professor of STEM Education
Dear Euisuk, thank you for checking out our project! You raise very good question. Making is a natural way for young children to learn. Elementary school teachers are generalists who are prepared to teach every subject, so bringing making into the classroom can support interdisciplinary approach. What is difficult - the structure of traditional schooling that breaks natural integration of knowledge into separate disciplines. While this could be appropriate for secondary school in order to study specific disciplines in depth, in elementary school children need to learn the big picture of the world around them, and this learning should be by doing. Maker movement can provide that environment within the school. Professionals, like engineers, can collaborate with teachers to support each other to help kids to solve problems.
Sharon Cameron
4th Grade Mathematics/Science Teacher
Good day Euisuk Sung,
Thank you for viewing our video and taking the time to comment and ask questions. Yes, I do believe that the maker education can go to schools. We are in the beginning stages of bringing the maker movement to our students on the elementary level. We are trying to give our students the experience of feeling safe and confident in just completing a project, then challenge them to build on the models they replicated. Your idea of partnering with engineers is a great idea for future consideration. Keeping our goal in mind of bringing the maker movement to the elementary level, we should plan to have workshops to connect engineers to the process of teaching by modeling and supporting them with teaching skills.
Irina Lyublinskaya
Jarra Dandrea
5th Grade Special Education Teacher
Hello Euisuk,
Thank you so much for viewing our video! I am a firm believer that MakerSpace and Maker Education can come to schools. We are lucky here on Staten Island because our MakerSpace offers a STEAM Truck, a mobile MakerSpace, which will come visit your schools and work on a specific project with the class and classroom teacher. For example, the STEAM Truck came to a local school and helped students design and build planters for their community garden. The teacher and students brainstormed and designed the planters before the truck came. When the truck came to the school they brought wood and tools and with their oversight the students built planters. Another way that Maker Education can come to schools is helping teachers build MakerSpaces inside of their classrooms, or schools can designated a room within their building that is a MakerSpace that students visit just like they would art or music.
I think we are teaching in a very exciting time! The Maker Movement is growing!
Thank you,
Jarra
Sharon Cameron
Sharon Cameron
4th Grade Mathematics/Science Teacher
Thank you everyone, for taking the time out to view our page and work. We are a work in progress and welcome your feedback and suggestions
Rebecca Lugo
K - 5 Science/Coding Cluster Teacher
We would love to hear from the community: Are you bringing the Maker movement to your classroom? If so, how? If not, what are your challenges?
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.