RAFT Hands-On Education

What do math and music have in common?  Numbers tell us a lot about music! Math explains why notes sound higher than others, why instruments look the way they  are, and why some sounds are more pleasing to the ear than others. Math and music  are universal languages and use patterns to convey meaning! On November 3rd, at this year’s Marion Cilker Conference at SJSU, RAFT’s  Education Team’s Jeanne Lazzarini and Dianne Hurvitz co-presented “Harmonizing  with STEAM Standards” on that very subject in front of enthusiastic SJSU students!  Participants tackled a Design Challenge creating music collaboratively out of recycled  materials and making connections with mathematics! This challenge also introduced  other opportunities for cross-disciplinary STEAM lessons in literature, technology,  engineering, and science! How can you generate curiosity about music and math Watch this fantastic YouTube video with your students : Landfill Harmon...

Nick Williams, employee at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and avid science educator, is a new RAFT member who just took 1,300 of our hands-on activity kits to rural Alaska. We enjoyed learning about how Nick and his team helped hundreds of students get excited about science. ________________________________________________________________________________ This fall, I took 1,300 RAFT kits on a trip to promote learning science at schools in the remote Alaskan villages of Kivalina and Kiana. Kivalina is a coastal village situated atop two square miles at the southern tip of a narrow, eight-mile long barrier reed separating the Chukchi Sea from the Kivalina River. It has a population of approximately 375, with about 150 in their school, Pre-K through 12 th grade. Kiana is inland and sits on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Kobuk and Squirrel Rivers in northwestern Alaska, about 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Approximately 350 people live in Kiana, with about 120 kid...

Last week 1,800 excited teachers descended on Palm Springs for the 2013 CSTA science conference. Every session focused on the Next Generation Science Standards was packed!  I learned volumes listening as teachers shared questions and ideas. I heard very few "why" questions - everyone understands why NGSS is being implemented.  Most of the questions I heard were " how ".  Conference attendees wanted practical tools to launch NGSS in their classrooms. During he RAFT session, I was honored to present to a standing-room-only crowd. Amazingly, the eager audience built four RAFT kits in under one hour. In addition to asking questions, teachers shared solutions of their own. They described creative ways to apply RAFT-style learning in their classrooms. Project-based learning, inquiry-based instruction, and design challenge thinking are at the forefront now.  The teachers were answering the "how" question for themselves! At the conference, it was also intere...