Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
All about makerspaces Makerspaces! What are they, why are they useful, who are they for, and how do they work? What’s a makerspace? A makerspace is a space for creating and making. The term “makerspaces” conjures up different images in almost everybody who uses it. A makerspace can be many different things. Makerspaces can have all …
At the Tarrant Institute, we write a lot about Project Based Learning (PBL). We consider it one of the engaging and meaningful instructional pedagogies that we endorse. As an approach, PBL offers many of the traits that address the important needs of young adolescents. It engages students in thinking about real-world problems, gives time for …
Continue reading “Introducing our new Project Based Learning toolkit”
At the Tarrant Institute, we write a lot about Project Based Learning (PBL). We consider it one of the engaging and meaningful instructional pedagogies that we endorse. As an approach, PBL offers many of the traits that address the important needs of young adolescents. It engages students in thinking about real-world problems, gives time for …
The recent issue of the research journal Middle Grades Review was extraordinary for two reasons. First, it focused on the intersection of personalized learning and social justice education. And second, Vermont educators authored all but one of the articles. I encourage folks to peruse the entire issue, but this may not be realistic in the …
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Walking through what it looks like to take commercial curriculum and develop a vibrant, personalized integrated unit. One thing we hear all the time in our work as professional development coordinators is: “How do you both personalize learning for students AND use the curriculum materials adopted by the district or school? Aren’t these things in …
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I’m Jeanie Phillips and we’re back for a third season of vted Reads! Books by, for and with Vermont educators. Kicking off this season we’re joined on the show by author and former teacher Kate Messner. Kate’s here to talk about how we can use books about some dark topics as conduits to reach students …
It’s that time of year again! Time for New Year’s resolutions! Could you use a little boost as we kick off the new year? Then why not visit your school’s makerspace? Did you know that you can use your makerspace for instructional shifts? This includes shifts to: project-based learning; more constructivist learning; learner-centered learning; more …
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Lucie delaBruere has spent 30 years in Vermont school teaching and learning with students from kindergarten to grad school. For 20 years her classrooms at Concord HS, Cabot School, and North Country HS and Career Center were filled with project-based learning that was hands-on minds-on and integrated within both local and global community. Her students …
OK, so middle school students crave personally meaningful and engaging learning experiences. How do we create these? Ta-da, featuring a non-exclusive list of strategies and practices designed to do just that. Please add your own in the comments and let us know what we’ve missed! Project-based learning In Project-based learning, students identify a question they …
2 ways to bring in transferable skills Makerspaces are amazing. They’re a big carnival of lights and sounds and glue and lasers, arduinos, controllers and 3D, oh my. They’re a beloved opportunity for students to get hands-on with their learning, a place where they can get up out of theirs seats and go make …
Continue reading “Setting behavioral expectations in a makerspace”
Making time for making at Ottauquechee STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics — gives students the opportunity to create. To make. Maybe to fail. To try again! And to make something that improves a condition, solves a problem, or makes the world a better place. But if your school currently doesn’t offer a …
Virtual bulletin boards to go! Staying organized as a teacher can be a major challenge. Between student work, teacher plans, sticky notes, school supplies it’s easy to get buried and overwhelmed! This can especially be hard in a personalized learning environment, where students are often working at different paces, with different resources. But whether you’re …
Makerspace learning at Proctor Elementary In this final post of our series on how maker-centered learning can help students develop transferable skills, we take a look at Integrative and Informed Thinking. During EMMA’s visit to Proctor Elementary School, in Proctor VT, the potential for maker-centered learning to support students’ integrated and informed thinking really came …
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Making as evidence of problem-solving It’s quite easy to see how making often takes students on new journeys, where their imagination provides opportunities to exercise the transferable skill of creative and practical problem solving. After a visit by EMMA, students at Malletts Bay School, in Colchester VT, were inspired to use their new skills to create …
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The Maker Movement & Transferable Skills, Part 2 We’re looking at how maker-centered learning provides opportunities for students to develop the Vermont Agency of Education’s five Transferable Skills, starting with Clear and Effective Communication. Today we continue our series with more examples. Our mobile making lab’s visits brought forth evidence of students taking charge of …
Making as evidence of transferable skills around Vermont During the past year, EMMA has visited schools around Vermont to fuel the conversation about maker-centered learning. As we reflected on each of EMMA’s visits, we continually noticed that maker centered learning provided evidence of students applying cross-disciplinary transferable skills.
How do project-based learning and makerspaces fit together? Making and PBL may look like two completely different educational movements, but in reality they work well together and each strengthens the other. That’s because they share a common fundamental underpinning: they honor students’ innate curiosity about the world.
Achieving escape velocity with students as partners Congratulations for making it through the first month of school! Whether it’s your first year as an educator or your thirty-first, the launch of the school year is a special — and especially challenging — time. It’s worth taking a moment to reflect and imagine how to build …
Get ready for a new vision of innovative education With the advent of personalized learning, many schools and educators are finding the freedom to launch their teaching in a whole new direction. They’re getting #ready2launch into a vision of personalized learning with students as partners, students as leaders, and schools as places where learning is …
Whose makerspace is it, anyway? A makerspace can take many forms, but fundamentally it should be a locus of student engagement and creativity. So engage them from the start by turning over as much of the design and operation of your makerspace as possible.
Starting up with our students Another exciting year is upon us. It may be difficult to wrest our attention from these glorious days of Vermont summer but never have the opportunities for good teaching been more open to us. As one teacher noted upon leaving this summer’s Middle Grades Institute, “I can bring about positive change in …
The Story of MakerSpace: A Rabbit Interrupts a Drowsy Day The story of MakerSpace at Crossett Brook Middle School begins with two bunnies. The bunnies lived outside the library in a hutch built by our Sustainability students who loved the bunnies. Winter was coming… the bunnies needed to move inside. The sad turn in this …
Continue reading “MakerSpace Wonderland at Crossett Brook MS”