RAFT Hands-On Education

What can cause math anxiety among students? Research shows an imposing authority figure, the risk of public embarrassment, and time deadlines (e.g. the pressure of timed tests) often cause math anxiety and unproductive tension among students. Students may not see relevance for knowing mathematics in their lives. Some teachers who do not understand much about math impose fear on students to prevent them from asking questions which might expose the teacher's ignorance. Math is often related with frustration --- students make negative associations with numbers from seeing adults with unpaid bills, unforeseen debts, overdrawn checkbooks, or other money experiences. What can be done to reduce math anxiety? Design classrooms to make students feel more successful. Students need a high level of success or a level of failure that they can tolerate. Incorrect responses must be handled in a positive way to encourage student participation and enhance student confidence. Studen...

November 2, 2013 was a day of great excitement!   This year’s Bay Area Science Festival at AT&T Park in San Francisco, sponsored by Chevron, was full of interesting exhibits displaying unique approaches to learning about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). There were lots of robot-based activities for kids to introduce themselves to basic design and programming and other cool make & take experiences.   Throughout the day the sky was filled with sunshine, a few clouds, and an 8-foot wide floating soccer ball powered and steered using remotely controlled fan jets! Novel gadgets and battle bots set aside, the highlight for RAFT was being able to distribute 14,000 activity kits to eager children ready to learn science.   We distributed RAFT’s infamous Hovercrafts, Simple Stethoscopes, Critter Capsules, and Fizzy Rockets.   By far the largest crowd was in the Chevron tent, where thousands of people made the Hovercrafts and Critter Capsules at RA...

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...

Students do best when they are actively engaged in hands-on learning in a classroom environment that fosters social and emotional well-being.  RAFT joins hands with Stanford's Cleo Eulau Center Resilience Consultant, Lisa Medoff, Ph.D., and EnCorps to share ideas and thoughts on how new teachers can best prepare for success in the classroom and in their professional careers.  Teachers are given many ideas on how to foster resilience, to create positive classroom and school communities, and how to promote emotional and social competence.  Motivating students involves preparing goals, addressing communication, engagement, and identifying a positive sense of self.  Hands-on learning benefits students (and teachers) by addressing these concerns through collaborative groupwork, team building, multilevel interactions, active listening and risk taking, engagement, communication and organizational skill building.  These skills promote a positive environme...

Integrated Learning in the Classroom A few days ago I was talking to a friend about issues that he felt needed to be addressed in order to “fix education”, as he put it.  His background is in electronics and he knows little about the daily activities of most teachers so his perspective on teaching is somewhat limited. But even so, he did raise an interesting point when he mentioned that “teachers should spend less time compartmentalizing everything and more time tying the disciplines together, making them more real for students.”  My friend was talking about providing an integrated learning approach to education.  As he said this I began to think about my own teaching and the number of examples I provided my students to show relatedness between the content areas, which admittedly could have been higher. Most elementary teachers have ample opportunities to show an integrated view of learning to their students.  This becomes more difficult at the highly-compartmen...

Since I’m an enthusiastic swimmer, and since the summer London Olympic Games are rapidly approaching, I got to wondering which woman holds the fastest Olympic record in the 100 meter freestyle stroke. I discovered the current Olympic record in the women's 100 meter freestyle swimming event is held by Britta Steffen of Germany with a time of 53.12 seconds. The record was set at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. But really, how fast is that? To help me figure this out, all it took was knowing some simple mathematics!! It helps to keep in mind the following: • 1 meter = .001 kilometer = 0.000621 miles = 0 miles and 1.09 yards • 1 hour = 3600 seconds Now we’re all set to go: • The swimming pool is 50m long, 25m wide and 3m deep. • It takes 1 complete lap to swim 100 meters. • 100 meters = 0.10 kilometers = 0.062 miles. • Speed = distance divided by time in hours; so time in hours = 53.12 seconds ÷ 3600 seconds = 0.014755 hours. So, Steffen’s speed = 0.062 miles ÷ 0.01475...

Recycle your materials into origami picture frames or greeting cards! “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Repurpose.” – One can learn so much about the environment while doing creative art projects from repurposed materials and offerings from Mother Nature! Fabric swatches, newspapers, plastics and other materials can be saved from the dump yard and converted into innovative gifts like fabric swatch notepads and origami picture frames. Celebrating the National Environment week, Resource Area For Teaching (RAFT) Redwood City is conducting a ‘ Great Ideas for Creating Re-purposed Gifts ’ workshop this weekend. Instructors Monica Lee and Dorothy Yuki, share their passion of using recycled and repurposed materials to create art from colored paper, plaster, tile, shells, beads, wood and many others! Monica who teaches craft workshops all over the Bay Area reflects, “On a practical level the materials we use are usually low cost or free to everyone. It opens the students’ mind to seeing everyd...