Creation Stations Before and After

Creation Stations has now been in full swing for over a year. During this time period, it has gone from:

a simple setup with 5 stations  --> to a larger space that included more stations --> to a completely renovated space with diverse station options

Creation Stations is a learning space and innovative hub that is designed to compliment building students' 21st-century skills.  Here are some before and after images.

Beebots

Beebots are a coding station at the Creation Stations. Students learn how to operate a Beebot, make the object follow a path, and then create their own path for the Beebot to follow.  Some key skills learned are problem solving, iterating, and persevering.  Meko learned all of the skills and by his 7th attempt he succeeded at making the Beebot follow the path he had invented!  

Creation Stations

Creation Stations are located in the upper level of our Elementary School's library. The ES Ed Tech team has organized this space to be an inspiration for both students and teachers to be creative and learn through experimentation. Each station supports one of the five themes: art, building, coding, engineering, and filmmaking.

Students choose a station and explore, make, or innovate at it. Here is a video of a Grade 1 class that recently visited Creation Stations.

K-2 WL Teachers Explore the Seesaw App

The Seesaw app was shared with K-2 WL teachers as an excellent option for students to be able to share their learning with teachers. The mandarin and spanish teachers loved how easy it was to setup a class and then share a QR code with your students so they could start creating straight away.

 

Creation Stations @TheLOFT

On Friday, Ms. Analu's first grade class tested out a new idea, Creation Stations
@The LOFT. Students chose one station to explore from five different station options prior to the session: Bee-Bots, Stop Motion, Lego, Art, Green Screen.  They had to choose a topic that interested them as the entire 40-45 minutes at The Loft would be spent at that one station, no switching stations.  Students arrived eager to get started right away.  After brief instructions on what to do if they got stuck (ipads with iBooks ready to go with directions on how to explore, discover, and create with the materials), where to store their ipads if they didn't need them, and a reminder that we must tidy up at the end, Ms. Analu's first graders literally jumped to task.

The students were so engaged, excited, and enthralled with their explorations, discoveries, and creations that the time flew by for everyone!  Not only did students love this time because it was fun, valuable skills were practiced and learned:  communicating with each other to problem solve how the Bee-Bot works, collaborating with other students in order to build a Lego City together, critical thinking to figure out how to make a typewriter out of paper, to name just a few.  So it seems that the first trial run of Creation Stations @TheLOFT was a success.  Ms. Analu confirmed that she would definitely bring her students back for another session.