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.

Discovery Time

Today Ms. Analu and I introduced Discovery Time to her class.  Discovery Time is a personalized inquiry time where students have an opportunity to explore a passion, interest, or a curiosity.  After a brief introduction, the students ideated effortlessly proving that children really are naturally curious.  Students documented their idea using the app Pic Kids and then posted their ideas on their class's student-run blog.  We will follow up with a planning session. During this lesson, students will have to document how they will make their idea happen as well as note the materials they will need.  Their enthusiasm was contagious and I can't wait to continue either!  

student Pic Kids poster sample

QR Code Quest

Grade 1 students have begun their unit on weather in Science.  What better way to generate interest in this topic than looking at extreme weather!?!  Tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, blizzards, and thunder/lightning always intrigues students. 

Students in Miss Kumar's class chose an extreme weather from six different options and followed a QR Code Quest to learn more information about their extreme weather.  In order to complete their quest for information they had to:

• scan a QR code with a video about their extreme weather
• write down 1-2 observations from the video
• scan a QR code to access PebbleGo and login to find the eBook about their extreme weather
• write down 1-2 facts from the book
• scan a QR code with directions on what to do with their researched information
• create a product on their ipad (using Pic Kids, Book Creator, Yakit, or Doodlecast Pro) sharing what they learned

Students were engaged throughout the process and all students learned at least one new piece of information about their extreme weather from their QR Code Quest!

Resources Used:

• YouTube videos of extreme weather
• PebbleGo
• BrainPop
• Handout created by teacher 

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.

 

Storehouse App

A colleague recommended a new app called Storehouse to make photo stories.  I tested it out this weekend and appreciated the simple user-friendly way users can create and share a photo story. Here is a link to my Creation Stations Story, but you can embed the photo story as well.

  

The Storehouse app is free in the US iTunes store.

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.

Perspectives Blog

The K-1 librarian and I were highlighted in the SAS Perspectives Blog for the Going Online Safely Digital Citizenship lesson we co-taught two weeks ago.  Check it out as well as the myriad of other stories on the blog that have been shared from various SAS perspectives.  Our post can be found here.