My students need Legos to complete STEM challenges, a tripod to prepare multimedia projects, and hand tools for building, assembling and disassembling.
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
I’m Mary Geist and I’ve been the librarian at Belfield for 7 years. I first heard of Makerspaces at a librarians' conference. About the same time, our district’s professional development team began encouraging teachers to incorporate more “paperless learning” into our lessons.
We are a one-grade school in a rural district and serve about 180, mostly low income students.
Our school is the only one in the district that does not offer art or music classes. .
I have a small collection of learning centers in the library, including puzzles, board games, and an Art Cart with basic supplies. Last fall one of our teachers heard me say that I wanted to create some more hands-on centers for the library, and brought me a huge box of Legos from her attic. My students went wild over them! At least three have come up to me in the months since and told me they didn’t have Legos at home and had never played with them before. Even though I have lived in this area most of my life and have seen plenty of poverty, this still took me by surprise!
My Project
Our library is small, so I’m choosing maker activities that can be used by all classes, and are easy to swap out and store. Students will use Legos and Snap Circuits to complete a variety of increasingly complex STEM challenges. My teachers and I plan to use the tripod for a variety of multimedia projects, including video book trailers. We will use the hand tools for woodworking and crafts projects, and for disassembling computer components to explore how they work.
The goal of our Makerspace is to encourage open-ended creativity in our students, enabling them to become critical thinkers and problem solvers - skills essential to 21st Century success.
“Makerspaces are a natural evolution for libraries. We need to make the resources available to our students that will help guide their inquiry and exploration. Who can predict what our students will create when given the space and tools necessary?” (Goerner, SLJ, 1/15/15).
Thank you for your support!
Snap Circuits SC-300 Electronics Discovery Kit
• Amazon Business
$42.75
2
$85.50
Stanley 94-248 65-Piece Homeowner's Tool Kit
• Amazon Business
$39.99
2
$79.98
Super XL Bag of Plastic Building Bricks 1000 Building Bricks, Plastic Bricks Compatible with LEGO, Classic Colors, No Annoying Fillers Bricks
• Amazon Business
$31.99
2
$63.98
Brick Building Base Plates By SCS - Large 10"x10" Baseplates (6 Pack Variety Pack) - Tight Fit with Lego
• Amazon Business
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Geist and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
