Alison Taxis

My name is Alison Taxis and I am a 9-10th grade special education teacher at Eisenhower, working with students in our Foundations program (students with significant needs). This is my second year at Eisenhower, and in New Berlin. I teach a special education English and Math course, and, support my students in their regular education science, social studies, and elective courses. I enjoy creating purposeful and highly engaging activities/lessons that align to my student’s unique needs and standards.

I enjoy being a maker champion, because I have had the opportunity to collaborate with different teachers and specialists across the district. Through these collaborations, I have learned many new strategies and technological activities that I can implement with my students. I also love the opportunity to brainstorm and trouble-shoot ideas off of other professionals in the district. Additionally, I enjoy finding ways to incorporate making into my curriculum, and planning units that are meaningful to my students, teach important making skills, while also aligning to their academic standards/curriculum.

Provocation:

How might we increase the amount of money we make each week at our popcorn stand?

MAKER PLAN The challenge for my students in this activity is to increase the number of customers to our Foundations popcorn stand in order to increase revenue. This is important to our classroom, because the money earned in our popcorn sales is used to purchase classroom materials. If we do not make enough money in our popcorn sales, we will not be able to purchase independent living, sensory, or academic supports from our classroom fund. The students will be motivated to increase our revenue because we often use the popcorn money to purchase fidgets, sensory toys, and independent living materials (ingredients for cooking, etc.) with this money. The provocation used in this activity is: “How might we increase the amount of money we make each week at our popcorn stand?”

Agency:

Throughout this activity, the students will be taught a set of 8 advertisement techniques that they can use to draw more customers to our popcorn stand. Due to the population of students that I am working with, I need to explicitly teach them different advertising strategies/techniques so they are able to complete the activity. The students will have an opportunity to play around with each type of advertisement in order to gage their level of interest. The students will then be able to use their voice and choice to determine which advertising technique they would like to use to create their prototype. The students will have full ownership to design their prototypes as they believe fits their creative and academic abilities.

Authenticity:

This experience is connected to human issues, because the provocation directly affects the experience that our Foundations students have at school. If we do not make enough money from our popcorn sales, the students will not have the opportunity to access extra sensory fidgets, independent living activities (ingredients, etc.), and engaging, hands-on teaching supplements. The students enjoy all these aspects of their school day and would be disappointed to lose the opportunity to access these activities/items.

Audience:

The audience for this activity will be the students and staff at Eisenhower, and, any other potential customers to the Foundations popcorn stand.

• It is helpful to try and incorporate a maker plan into an overall unit, rather than trying to squeeze it all into one day/lesson.
• Follow local current events/news to try and incorporate these into maker units or plans. This allows for a real-life problem for the students to try and solve that is relevant to their lives.
• Break your maker plans up into steps, following the Maker Plan guidelines/checklists in order to make planning easier on yourself. Take it one step at a time.