Making is spreading at Oak Grove and Beyond

Posted: February, 20 2015 at 9:52PM Friday, February 20, 2015

It's been a busy month!Our District GATE Coordinator, Wayne Yamagishi, has supported my efforts and enthusiasm for Maker Education for the past year. GATE had a meeting at the end of January to discuss the progress of Maker activities at Oak Grove, and, my personal goal, the development of a Maker Elective at our middle school: Willowside Middle School. All of the District GATE leaders - and my site Principal - support bringing access to Making experiences to all students in our district. Having said that, yesterday I worked with Beth Acosta, 6th grade teacher at Willowside, to construct no less than SEVEN portable marble walls like the ones I made with Kathy Luning, 2nd grade teacher from Oak Grove, at Casey's Make and Take workshop at the beginning of this month.Making is bursting at Oak Grove: first grade is making rockets. Several classrooms, k-5, are using Kathy Luning's Wind Tunnel from Casey's third Make and Take workshop. Third graders will be making and labeling crayfish body parts out of various wires using pliers from a Sebastopol Hardware grant. A fourth grade classroom is making their own historically authentic wheelbarrow for an upcoming play. Fifth graders designed and built wooden geoboards that they hammered and woodburned. And finally, today I met with Principal Paige Gardner and our Before and After School Program Coordinator, Danielle Bowden-Donahue for pre-K to 8th grade as well as our Summer Program Coordinator, Vera Gutierrez. Our topic today was MAKING!! I shared several ideas and resources with Danielle and Vera. As they are both new to maker education but they went away from the meeting excited and supportive of embracing maker spaces in both the summer and the before and after school programs. I am so thrilled!

Two Student Films + Three Students Films in the #Sonoma5MinuteFilmFestival

Posted: March, 14 2015 at 8:46PM

Two of my students' films were nominated to be viewed at Third Street Cinema on March 16th and three films from our sister Middle School, Willowside were also selected! That means our two school district represents about 1/3 or the total finalists! I am so excited to see my students have this opportunity to showcase their hard work.I am in the process of making my own film about the process of taking two different grade levels through the film making process for the film festival so stay tuned!

Rocket Week on the horizon at Oak Grove Elementary School!

Posted: February, 20 2015 at 9:11PM Friday, February 20, 2015In January I went to Casey Shea's Make and Take air -compressed rocket launcher workshop at Analy Maker Space. The week after that, I took it to my faculty meeting and launched a rocket to generate intrigue and interest (see Casey's blog post about it here: http://www.scoe.org/pub/htdocs/blog-make.html?id=159) . Our site principal, Paige Gardner, fully supports maker education at Oak Grove, and she encouraged me to run with the Rocket Week idea at the Faculty meeting. We discussed the differentiation for k-5, and the following week several classrooms built rockets of varying shapes, sizes, and complexities. Yesterday one of those classes launched their creations to see how far they would launch; one of them split into four parts but still managed to shoot a fair distance!Our school-wide Rocket Week date will be discussed at our next Faculty meeting, but it looks like we are shooting for after CAASPP is over.

Maker Gets Added to our District's Technology Plan by both Site Administrators!

Posted: March, 03 2015 at 9:01PM

On Thursday, February 26th, I spent the day participating in the District Technology Committee's revision of our Technology Plan. For the first time ever, Maker concepts and design considerations were added to this plan. When we meet in March, we will consider funding considerations for both sites and I intend to lobby for additional technologies to support our Multimedia, Library Maker Space, Maker Elective, and elementary classroom Maker classrooms. It is an exciting time to be a Maker Educator!

18 Films entered in SCOE's Five Minute Film Festival

Posted: March, 03 2015 at 9:05PM My fourth graders successfully wrote and created 18 different films for the film festival that closed yesterday - March 2. Film making involves interating, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, sharing, problem solving, creativity and so much more! Many classrooms at my school put on a school-wide play performance; this year, my students will put on a school-wide Film Festival!