Maker Day Today

Dear Members of the J. Turner Hood School Community,

This year was have continued forward with our “Makerspace Days.” In the past you have read some of my notes on the topic of Makerspaces and the associated benefits of employing the maker mentality when solving a problem.

I am respectfully requesting that you discuss today’s school wide maker activity with your child when they get home or over this upcoming extended weekend.

Today was an amazing day here at the Hood School where students and staff from across grades and classes were mixed up into different settings and presented a working challenge.  For me, I was able to observe some significant community building as well as some amazing problem solving in action.

I was able to interview some of our students and all reported that they enjoyed the experience. Reese, grade 3 and Braelynn, grade 4, briefly shared their thoughts on the day with me. Reese noted that she thought today was fun and that she was able to save her building from toppling over and make some adjustments to make the structure sound. Braelynn also reported that she enjoyed the planning time and building the structure. I was also able to interview two grade 5 students. Melanie and Mia reported that they enjoyed working with students from other grades because they were able to “take charge” and help younger students. Mia loves her maker days because it involves engineering and teamwork.

The staff reported that is was a well-organized, educationally beneficial event. Specifically, the cooperation between different age level students was cited. Furthermore, the problem solving, cooperative learning and engagement was cited as a major success. Ms. Slaven, a first grade teacher, cited the specific activity that was focused on our math initiative to build our math community within the Hood School.

Today was our first school wide maker day of this school year. The day was sponsored by our internal Makerspace professional learning community. This amazing group of individuals was able to create a meaningful and engaging school wide activity and I am proud of their efforts.

Please stop by the school to look at our students’ amazing creations and look at the Hood School twitter account for some more amazing photos.