Makerspace

Third Grade

Ms. Tarr

📫 Ms. Tarr : Email

Welcome to our MakerSpace Class Portfolio! This page will act as your window into the many fantastic things happening in our classroom.

What is MakerSpace?

"MakerSpace is a place for everyone, creative and not creative to come and explore their passions using raw materials, tools, technology, repurposed items, and imagination. Students can work individually or collaboratively, using technology and/or drawing on the collective wisdom of those in the room to help achieve their goal in a makerspace."

--Thinkers and Tinkers

Our Focus

In our MakerSpace, we are focused on growing our STEM identity and mindset. This means, we are learning to become thinkers, explorers, scientists, engineers, tinkerers, creators, and makers. We learn that it's okay for something to fail, and if it does, we work to improve it. Most importantly, we are learning how to solve problems with creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.

Conversation Starters

When speaking with a young maker, it is always best practice to focus questions on the "how" rather than the final identification.

Sample Conversation starters include:

"What problem were you solving?"
"Can you tell me how you solved the problem?"
"Did you have a plan on how to solve your problem from the start? Did your plan have to change?"
"Was there anything challenging about making/solving this?"
"What are you most proud of with this make?"

If you are looking for specific pictures of your child or evidence of their work, I encourage you to check out your child's digital portfolio on Seesaw. At the start of the school year, we do our best to connect every family to their child's Seesaw using your Skyward email. If you need a code sent home or emailed to you for your child, please email Ms. Tarr!

In our K-4 makerspace classrooms, we use station-based teaching. Within a single unit, students will rotate through 3-4 different stations, each with a very important learning goal focused on developing STEM thinking in our learners. Station-based teaching allows for students to spend most of their time engaged in play-based learning. Play-based learning is exactly what it sounds like: where we allow our students the time to play and explore in their own time, with their peers, free from explicit adult direction. Through play-based learning, students are given the space and time to explore STEM concepts such as coding, engineering, circuitry, etc. which promotes critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and most importantly, confidence! These explorations build up background knowledge on how the world works, which helps to prepare students for the small-group instruction they get from Ms. Tarr in areas of computer science, engineering, and problem solving.

2022-2023

Badging System

Throughout a student's career as a Metcalf Maker in our Hatch Maker Lab, students are building up their proficiencies with a variety of STEM maker tools. In an effort to help your child and our school staff keep track of what tools your child has proven proficiencies in, students earn badges every time they learn new tools. Our yellow badges mean that your child is able to use a given tool with supervision/help. Our green badges mean that your child is able to use a given tool independently.

Feel free to stop on by our room anytime our Hatch Maker Lab is open to check out your child's lanyard and all the cool tools they've mastered!

Badging Grade Level Introductions

Unit 1:

I am a Maker

All About Me

As we start our journey as 3rd Grade Metcalf Makers, it is essential that our children understand how to use Seesaw to document their learning and build their digital maker portfolio. In order to help us navigate our devices and Seesaw, as well as to help me get to know your child, we spend time as a class completing a digital activity called "All About Me"

Additionally, we use this activity to practice how to be good digital collaborators. As makers, it is our job to provide regular feedback to each other so that we can improve our creations. However, giving constructive feedback can be tricky for students to do. We like to practice the TAG method of feedback. All comments should start with something positive (Tell something you liked), we then ask questions to either help our own thinking or encourage another's thinking (Ask a question), finally we give direct suggestions for improvement (Give a suggestion). Because this method of feedback can be tricky, it's helpful to practice with a low-stakes activity. Such as giving feedback on each other's All About Me creations.

Chromebook Introduction

Third grade students already have a year of using Chromebooks under their belt, but we still find that it's helpful to have a refresher every year for our elementary students. Especially as each year, we have to create a new password and re-set up our accounts. We dedicate the first few classes towards setting up our devices, creating passwords, and troubleshooting all device issues.

Standards Addressed:

Troubleshooting

3-5.CS.03 Determine potential solutions to solve simple hardware and software problems using common troubleshooting strategies.

Cybersecurity

3-5.NI.05 Discuss real-world cybersecurity problems and how personal information can be protected.

Social Interactions

3-5.IC.20 Seek diverse perspectives for the purpose of improving computational artifacts.

Unit 2:

Computing Systems

Google Workspace

As a third grader, your child is expected to be able to use Google Workspace with confidence for completion of a lot of their classwork. Though we've learned the basics of our Google Workspace tools like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Slides, and Google Drive, third grade is all about building up maximum proficiency. In small groups, your child works with me to learn the importance of an organized digital workspace (Google Drive), how to craft an appropriate email (Gmail), and how to create digital work (Google Docs & Google Slides).

Robo Keyboard the Typing Dog

One of the big jumps from 2nd grade to 3rd grade is that the focus is no longer simply on navigating a computer system, it becomes learning how a computer system works. Using Seesaw self-guided lessons, your child is exploring the difference between hardware and software and learning about how both components work together to form a computer system. The focus of these lessons is on building appropriate vocabulary, and creating a model texting device in order to explain the importance of both hardware and software within a system.

These lessons create important foundational knowledge that will help your child reach their ultimate maker goal: Building an actual, functioning computer in 4th grade!

Open Creation Station

When your child is not working on their self-guided Seesaw Lessons or with me learning about Google Workspace, they are engaging in open creation and play at the lego station. The purpose of this open play is to continue to develop your child's STEM thinking in the following areas:

- Problem Solving
- Spatial Awareness
- Collaboration & Communication
- Structural Engineering

Standards Addressed:

Devices

3-5.CS.01 Describe how internal and external parts of computing devices function to form a system.

Hardware and Software

3-5.CS.02 Model how computer hardware and software work together as a system to accomplish tasks. Discuss task specific embedded systems.

Troubleshooting

3-5.CS.03 Determine potential solutions to solve simple hardware and software problems using common troubleshooting strategies

Unit 3:

Movie Adaptations: Stop Motion

Stop motion video is an animated filming technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames to eventually be put together to create a complete animated video. Stop motion is a great 3rd grade project because it incorporates several different skillsets and standards while allowing students to see how deeply integrated the arts and sciences truly are.

This unit begins by having students explore a bit about the history of animation and filmmaking. Students learn important vocabulary such as animation, frame, frame rate, and scene. We spend some time watching professional examples of Stop Motion and discussing filming techniques. Students watch scenes from The Nightmare Before Christmas (comparing what's clay, what's painting, along with how motion/movement is created through photographs) and The Lego Movie (comparing what's computer graphics and what's stop motion and why).

Student groups are tasked with taking a scene from a book and adapting it into a stop motion video. Within this project students are expected to:

Identify main characters, settings, and important action/dialogue within a scene
Make inferences about a text in order to expand a written scene into a complete visual medium
Write a script
Build/engineer a set and props using Legos
Explore lighting techniques
Using measurement skills in order to ensure consistent filming from day to day
Photograph scene creating small movements to simulate motion
Assemble work together within "Stop Motion Studio" on class iPads
Record dialogue and select background music for video when relevant
Accurately credit appropriate artists and collaborators

This project is a big undertaking for 3rd grade and requires a lot of different skillsets. This is where collaboration and communication come in. Not every student is going to find a strength in every aspect of this project, however, the purpose is to learn how to communicate with their group and collaborate with one another effectively in order to make sure everyone is participating to the best of their ability and maximizing on their strengths. Students will NOT be assessed on how "good" their final product looks at the end of this project. Rather, what is being assessed are the 4Cs (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity) and the ISTE Standards.

Students meeting 3rd grade expectations should be able to:

Positively communicate and collaborate with group members. This includes an ability to accept feedback and compromise
Use creativity to solve problems as they arise
Apply what is known about technology and engineering to think critically while solving problems
Use the design process (planning before building, testing and making improvements when appropriate, etc.)
Deepen current understanding of technology tools and the ways in which we leverage technology to express ideas
Use technology safely and responsibly
Take active roles in own learning & set appropriate goals for own learning

Page updated

Report abuse