As districts reel to meet the evolving needs of their communities beset by a pandemic, the loss of experiential, maker-centered learning seems inevitable. Teachers in remote or hybrid settings face a real challenge, made all the more urgent by the need for students to engage in tactile learning away from ubiquitous screens. But there are strategies you can use to help your students bring a bit of maker culture home.
2 STRATEGIES FOR OFFERING HANDS-ON PROJECTS REMOTELY
Integrate choice. Student-centric learning design has always heavily featured student choice, and it’s the right time to lean into it even more. Choice grants focused autonomy to students, affording them a sense of control in uncertain times. It also makes a positive result more achievable. We can’t possibly imagine and plan for all the hurdles in each student’s home, and offering a more open-ended process or product can give students the leeway and the license to navigate their environments successfully. Choice has the added benefit of allowing your students to exercise and appreciate multiple modalities and intelligences.
Some third graders began learning about forces in motion and were given the option to design a real physical “golf” course using any ball and whatever building blocks they might have had available (recyclables, Lego Duplos, wooden blocks, or even furniture). Those without the materials, or who were learning at a house that wasn’t their own, were invited to use a digital simulation of tug-of-war from PhET, a product of the University of Colorado Boulder that provides free, interactive math and science simulations. Everyone learned in ways that were meaningful and accessible to them, and their end-of-lesson discussion was much richer due to the varied and diverse experiences of their peers.
Keep it accessible by using what they likely already have.Being cognizant of what materials you request and making an effort to avoid those that are expensive, out of the ordinary, or both can help all students to find your remote projects accessible. In a climate where pennies are counted more carefully and extra trips out of the home are avoided, don’t add to the problem by requiring items that aren’t likely to be in the home already. It’s a great time for reusing recyclables and making things that are easy to deconstruct, without having ruined the materials that went into them. continue reading…….
