BREAKING NEWS!!!!......

You may have heard that The Loft was getting a makeover. This week, we invite you to come see what our Creation Stations are all about. Our Creation Stations give students the opportunity to be "Coders", "Builders", "Artists", "Engineers", and "Filmmakers" - creating anything that their minds can come up with. Each of the Creation Stations offers a unique way to integrate with the DSLOs.

With the school year beginning to wrap up, what better way to keep students engaged and empowered. Come check out one of our LOFT PD sessions during the week of April 11th -15th to see how the Creation Stations can support student creativity and innovation within your class.

The ES Ed Tech team has been transforming the LOFT into a creative indoor 'playground' for students where the SAS DSLOs (character, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, content knowledge, and cultural competence) are finding traction.

The learning activities are organized under 5 themes: Art, Building, Coding, Engineering, and Filmmaking. Then each theme has various stations where students can explore, make, and innovate based on Challenge Cards specific to that station.  Challenge Cards come in levels as well to take into consideration that students from ages 5-11 use this space.


In addition, students are tracking their progress with the use of a Creation Stations Passport.  They must note down which station they completed (under the correct theme) and demonstrate and/or explain to a teacher which level they accomplished.  Success is noted with an 'Explorer', 'Maker', or 'Innovator' stamp in the student's passport.    

3rd grade teacher, Cayla Shaw, attended the Wednesday Autocrat PD session and participated in a conversation centered on the broader applications of this Google Add-On.  Not only was Cayla keen to understand details of how Autocrat works, her mind was already developing a plan on how to implement it in the classroom.  She quickly saw the benefit of a more efficient way to asses and give feedback on student learning with Autocrat.  Kudos to Cayla for then creating a form for students to complete, make a document to merge the data onto, provide teacher feedback on the spreadsheet, and then run Autocrat.  See the finished assessment below, an outstanding example of innovative and creative teaching.

On Friday, Ms. Analu's first grade class tested out a new idea, Creation Stations
@The LOFT. Students chose one station to explore from five different station options prior to the session: Bee-Bots, Stop Motion, Lego, Art, Green Screen.  They had to choose a topic that interested them as the entire 40-45 minutes at The Loft would be spent at that one station, no switching stations.  Students arrived eager to get started right away.  After brief instructions on what to do if they got stuck (ipads with iBooks ready to go with directions on how to explore, discover, and create with the materials), where to store their ipads if they didn't need them, and a reminder that we must tidy up at the end, Ms. Analu's first graders literally jumped to task.

The students were so engaged, excited, and enthralled with their explorations, discoveries, and creations that the time flew by for everyone!  Not only did students love this time because it was fun, valuable skills were practiced and learned:  communicating with each other to problem solve how the Bee-Bot works, collaborating with other students in order to build a Lego City together, critical thinking to figure out how to make a typewriter out of paper, to name just a few.  So it seems that the first trial run of Creation Stations @TheLOFT was a success.  Ms. Analu confirmed that she would definitely bring her students back for another session.