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Welcome to Makerspace with Ms. Kramer

Soaring in Makerspace

Our Makerspace Vision: Students will be resilient makers and innovators who work individually and collaboratively to use the engineering design process and skills with digital and manual tools to construct creative solutions to complex challenges.

 

Interwoven through the year are engineering practices from the NextGen Science Standards; skills from the state's computer science standards; and makerspace standards that emphasize collaboration, empathy, communication, and an ethic of excellence for improvement through peer and self feedback.

 

The makerspace needs parent volunteers to support young makers -- during their classes, and also by helping prepare materials for them to use. A sign-up link will go out near the start of the year.

 

Projects (these are only a few!)

  • Students work with robots at all grade levels -- Indi cars in kindergarten, on to Dash, VEX-GO, Ozobots, and VEX-IQ.
  • Physical projects range from building different iterations of bridges for the Billy Goats Gruff in K, to sawing wood for bookends with laser cut inserts of students' own drawings.
  • K makers learn about using glue and scissors to create basic cardboard support structures; they are introduced to the engineering design process
  • 1st Grade makers work individually and with partners to meet a variety of challenges: tall (and strong) paper towers, and coding a character named Awbie to meet his goals.
  • 2nd Grade makers engineer impressive models of structures from around the world for multicultural week.
  • 3rd Grade makers build cardboard mazes, then code their Ozobots to successfully maneuver through the mazes.
  • 4th Grade makers problem-solve to create cardboard arcade games
  • 5th Grade makers build and program advanced VEX IQ robots, then complete challenges with them. 

 

Beliefs that guide my teaching (and my learning)

  • Failure recovery goes hand-in-hand with another key competency ...
  • A growth mindset lets us see ourselves as capable of growing our abilities to accomplish great things
  • Building an ethic of excellence helps us do more than we could have imagined
  • The abilities to collaborate and communicate effectively are essential
  • We need to be challenged -- and have fun!

 

Donations of "found" materials are welcome!

  • Corrugated cardboard: Moving size boxes and large TV or appliance boxes are great for the 4th Grade Cardboard Arcade!
  • Cardboard tubes from empty paper towel rolls, aluminum foil rolls, wrapping paper rolls, etc.
  • Flexible cardboard (the corrugation has thin, flat cardboard on only one side)
  • Adult boot and shoe boxes
  • Buttons!!!

 

My background:

  • Born and raised in Michigan
  • BA in English (University of Michigan - Ann Arbor)
  • First career: Newspaper reporting (Wrote articles that helped earn our San Jose Mercury News staff a Pulitzer Prize!)
  • 2nd career: 23 years in education in BHUSD and in Los Angeles Unified School District
  • Masters in Education Technology (UC-Fullerton)
  • National Board-Certified Teacher