Maker Space. Definitely one that I'm finding challenging. I'm not sure why - I've always considered myself a creative person. I love painting and creating and colour and tactile. I thought I'd pass it over to the students today to see what they could come up with. I needed inspiring and they're usually pretty good at coming up with things they want to do.
I chose the Edutopia definition for my base as this seemed the most accessible to the resources I had on hand.
A makerspace is not solely a science lab, woodshop, computer lab or art room, but it may contain elements found in all of these familiar spaces. Therefore, it must be designed to accommodate a wide range of activities, tools and materials. Diversity and cross-pollination of activities are critical to the design, making and exploration process, and they are what set makerspaces and STEAM labs apart from single-use spaces. A possible range of activities might include:
Cardboard construction
Prototyping
Woodworking
Electronics
Robotics
Digital fabrication
Building bicycles and kinetic machines
Textiles and sewing
I rifled through my cupboards and pulled out a selection of coloured paper, glue, scissors, and felt pens. I still wasn't sure how this was going to work, but seeing as "English is all about making" (thanks Claire), I figured there must be something to be created. Even if I didn't know, surely the kids with their collective brains could think of something.
I instructed them to use the resources available to them to show:
To create links between themselves and the text like this:
As always my juniors were my guinea pigs for my experiment and I'll let the photos tell the story today.
Year 9
Text: Private Peaceful
Student using tablet and coloured paper to deconstruct the characters
Dyslexic child creating a book - I thought this was particularly awesome.
A student working on showing the relationships between characters
A student creating a brochure to advertise her characters.
Year 10
Text: Merchant of Venice
A student's interpretation of my Venn Diagram task
A student showing the relationship between Portia and Nerrisa
A student's representation of Shylock
And some students would still rather write.
I'm sure that there's got to be a way to incorporate playdough into my lessons, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment