Creation, Innovation, and Makerspaces!

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My Students

As Walt Disney once said, "If you can dream it, you can do it!" In a time when assessments are the focus and Kindergarten no longer has play time, students need an outlet for their imagination to blossom. My goal is to have my students learn their strengths, be creative, and find their passion.

Our Title 1 School has a diverse population with the majority of our students being Hispanic.

We have over 900 students in our school which include 47 regular classrooms and 4 gifted classrooms (grades 2 - 5). About 75% of our students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. Many of our students are English Language Learners with several entering our school unable to speak or understand English. We also have a small population of ESE students. Our families come from diverse economic situations.

My Project

Makerspaces have been the hot topic of librarians in the past year. I am excited to try something new in our library to encourage creativity and imagination. When we introduce these Makerspaces to our students I see our students enthusiastically using their skills to create a variety of projects. We will have a diverse set of materials to cover science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) in order to give everyone the opportunity to discover their strengths and interests. Some of these materials include Legos, Snap Circuits, jewelry making supplies, craft looms, and Little Bits Electronics. Students will work individually and in small groups on various projects. Some projects can be taken home (jewelry and craft looms) and others will be taken apart to be built in a new way (Snap Circuits, Legos, and Little Bits). I will encourage my students to create, evaluate, revise, and rebuild to learn from their challenges and mistakes.

Many of our students do not have access to the materials we will provide in these Makerspaces.

My expectation is for every student to learn something new about themselves and find a creative outlet. When everyone is feeling stressed about testing, we need a place to let our minds be free to be creative and have fun while learning something new. Our students will benefit greatly from this opportunity. We might even encourage the next great scientist, architect, engineer, or artist.