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Sloatsburg Elementary took thoughtful action to establish a makerspace mindset, in which the skills of collaboration, creativity and critical thinking have been integrated within varying units of study. Sloatsburg Elementary is a Title I community public school, based within the village of Sloatsburg, New York (a suburban/rural region), serving approximately 215 students in Kindergarten through Grade 5.

The Implementation

By Michele McKiernan, Instructional Facilitator, Sloatsburg Elementary School, mmckiernan@sufferncentral.org

The role of the Instructional Facilitator is fluid, defined by the needs of the staff and the students. As someone who was new to the role, that meant that it wasn’t always clear to me what my job entailed, or whether I was even doing it well. I hadn’t been in the position for very long before discussing the idea of a makerspace with my principal; there were many uncertainties surrounding the concept. I wasn’t sure what I wanted the space to look like or what materials would work best and grow with our population; it was also a sweeping, evolutionary change for teachers.

However, I kept reminding myself of the line in the movie Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” To have a whole plan based around Kevin Costner doesn’t appear to be the most educationally sound method, but it’s what I was counting on; to be given the opportunity to build a program from the ground up is an innovative educator’s dream, and it’s��especially exciting when you recognize its potential. Often, what comes hand in hand with potential is pitfalls, and it became my mission to avoid as many pitfalls as possible by learning from the mistakes and successes of others. How could I develop a self-sustaining, far reaching model that is not dependent upon a person—with minimal experience in computer science and engineering, by the way—but a philosophy?

With an interest in creating such an environment, our school prepared to develop Creators’ Cove (our version of a makerspace), during the spring of 2017. After visiting multiple programs throughout our county and speaking to several technology coordinators in both Rockland County and Westchester County, a list of materials to purchase was generated. This list included picture books related to STEAM, a maker cart with many replenishable resources, robots with different purposes to span the grade levels (Dash and Dot, Sphero, Ozobots, Cubelets), Makey-Makey kits, and rolling carts to make the materials transportable. After all, it was our goal for teachers to take what they needed to use in their classrooms, so we might as well make them “grab and go” style. I started to look at the space we had and realized that much of what was there could be used, but my original goal of making the space inviting to teachers and students kept gnawing at me. So, I set about creating an industrial feel to the room: one that said, “to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk,” a quote by Thomas Edison. I collected materials from old science kits, made seating from old milk crates that I spray painted silver, asked our very talented (and very understanding) maintenance man Joe Galiano to not only paint me a green screen area but build a soundproof recording booth to create tutorials, and for a bit more ambience, made Lego blocks from cardboard boxes and cups and book holders to display our literature using cardboard and contact paper. When the kids looked around the room, I wanted them to see the ability to MAKE just about anything. When the space was created, we were ready to move forward with the curriculum design piece.

Once the materials were purchased, we started to design the curriculum to incorporate as many of the materials as we could within a spiraling curriculum that built upon the previous years’ experience.

Because the space was readily adaptable, we were able to focus our attention on the following generalizable goals:

• Generating teacher investment by connecting activities to the curriculum;
• Allowing ALL students an extended opportunity to work with both engineering and programming. Most programs I had seen extended this opportunity to small groups, rather than the whole population.
• Creating a plan that incorporated literacy skills;
• Implementing a co-teach gradual release model to increase teacher comfort level.

An initial and integral phase of our planning was determining practicable points in our school’s (K-5) curriculum maps, which could be enhanced within this space. It was critical to teacher investment that this curriculum was not seen as “something extra” to do, but as curriculum that meshed well with the components they were already teaching. To this end, I blended specific curricular units (across our school’s K-5 grade levels) along with supporting technology/tools, including:

Results

During the 2017-2018 school year, every grade level was examined on a consistent basis for an entire trimester. Kindergarten and grade two were seen the first trimester, grades one and four were seen during the second trimester, and grades three and five visited during the third trimester. Time spent in Creators’ Cove focused primarily on the Engineering Design Process and Computer Science and Programming, while assisting in developing communication, collaboration, feedback, and presentation skills. All teachers who brought their classes to Creators’ Cove were expected to be active and relevant co-teachers of the lesson. Because that was the expectation, lessons plans were written and shared with classroom teachers prior to their scheduled time, so that they could read the lesson and ask questions if necessary. Classroom teachers were encouraged to use questioning techniques with their students rather than guiding them to decisions.

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