My students need additional LEGO baseplates to expand our LEGO wall, a storage cart to hold LEGOs and Mindstorms robots, and books to inspire LEGO Mindstorms projects.
"Science is about wonder and risk and imagination, not checklists or vocabulary memorization." - Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. Our library Makerspace is a place for students to dream, to wonder, to take risks, and to exercise their creativity. With the right tools, the possibilities are limitless.
We are a Title 1 magnet middle school with a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
We are located in the inner city; many of our students come from low-income housing. 70% of our students are on free or reduced lunch. Our students come from all over the area, and represent all races and ethnicities. For many of our students, their only exposure to modern technology is at school.
We are seeking to help our students develop creativity, confidence, design thinking and team work by providing hands-on activities in Science Technology Engineering Art and Mathematics (STEAM) in our library. Many of our students are visual and kinesthetic learners - having opportunities to work with their hands and visualize concepts helps them to better grasp the things that they are learning in their classrooms. We have created a library Makerspace to provide a place for students to tinker during the school day, and we're starting an after-school STEAM Maker club.
My Project
Students don't grow out of LEGOs once they reach middle school. We began a Makerspace in our library this past year with bins of LEGOs and K'nex for our students to tinker with, and it was wildly successful. We want to expand on this by developing a unique and dynamic space for students to explore engineering while developing creativity and confidence. The baseplates we are requesting will be mounted to a sheet of masonite on a wall in the library. This will create a vertical space where students can create with LEGOs. We received some baseplates in our last DonorsChoose project - this project will help us to expand the LEGO wall so that more students can use it at one time.
We recently received a donation of LEGO Mindstorms NXT robots to our Makerspace. We are requesting books to help our students learn how to program and create projects with these robots. We are also getting a storage cart to organize the Mindstorms parts.
Exposing students to hands-on STEAM activities will engage them in exploring, discovering and learning and will help to ensure their success in the future.
Getting to make and create will transform our students from consumers of things into makers of things and will foster their sense of creativity. By giving our students a chance to tinker with LEGOs and Mindstorms robots, we can prepare them to be the engineers, inventors and scientists of the 21st Century.
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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. Rendina and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
