RAFT Hands-On Education

By Rita Mercado, First Grade Teacher, Serendipity School I have taught first grade for the last 12 years, and it seems like every year I get questions about what we do during our “Choice Time.” The number one thing that my students learn how to do during playtime or choice time is learn how to problem solve. My student’s favorite choice is the blocks. Here you see some children building with blocks, but what else are they doing. They are learning about spatial reasoning, using geometry, comparing heights and inclines, among many other things. Not only are children learning how to share and work together during playtime, but they are becoming the engineers of the future. I often overhear my students discussing how they can change the angle of their ramp to make the cars go faster or how to make their tower taller by building a more stable base. They also like to “shop” around the room to find things to add to their structures. “Let’s use this toilet paper roll to add a tunnel...

On March 29th, the SMCOE STEM fair was held at the Hiller Aviation Museum. Every year, RAFT is allowed to pick a special winner who has demonstrated an exceptional skills in science. The RAFT special award winner this year is Maya Ellis, a fifth grader from Central Middle School in San Carlos!  Maya's physics project, "Shaped for Speed," tested the effect of shape on the performance of boat hulls. She made simple aluminum foil hulls, which she floated in a tub of water. She added a drop of soap to the back of each boat, which propelled it across the tub. Maya is very familiar with the surfactant properties of soap. She tested four designs and discovered two were particularly good. Maya created a fifth design to extend her tests. She also tested both hot and cold water. All in all, Maya is an inquisitive young scientist!  Maya's award was created by one of RAFT's champions, Greg Brown, and was made using recycled materials:    • Surplus aluminum she...

By Michael Rosenberg, Teacher, Stratford School  There are few professions outside of teaching that can empathize with the struggle of being an educator. As a teacher, our days in the classroom can be a physical and mental roller coaster. Then at day’s end, stacks of papers await our pen and stickers, and Bay Area traffic awaits our draining commute home. Facing these issues, the recent addition of a child, and a move far from my campus have increased my need to find balance. However, wrestling with a reasonable balance of work and personal life has been a struggle for most of my career.   Knowing that I had to restructure my life to fit my new struggles, I decided to reevaluate my work and personal life balance. I began this process by first mapping my day which included commute time to and from work, prep-time, and hours spent at home. By experimenting with my commute to work, I found that leaving fifteen minutes earlier allowed me to avoid most of the traffic...

By Elisha Burns, RAFT Fellow Let me be one of the first to say there is an elephant in the room of education and it is called content knowledge.  As a teacher that has spent a few years teaching I can honestly say that the new Common Core curriculum has really opened my eyes to some of my own educational weaknesses. Have you seen some the questions that our students are being asked in the new curriculum? I consider myself an educated person (I do have my Master's degree in Elementary Education), but some of the questions being presented to my students really makes me question my level of content knowledge. It's not that I can't solve the problems, but I find myself spending quite a bit of time working out the problems so that I can teach my students how to tackle them. In the era of Common Core comes the new problem of teacher knowledge, especially in high needs areas. Gone are the days of catchy rhymes and memorizing factoids, the new standards requir...

By Earlene Coleman B.A.,M.Ed   It can be a little unsettling when you think you're teaching the perfect lesson and actually very few students are paying attention.  Teaching has often been called a “noble profession," one requiring diligence, patience, and a great sense of humor. At times it has been called “art.” However, for those in the trenches, we realize that more is needed and that nothing requires such focus, attention, dedication, and refinement of one’s teaching abilities as keeping all students engaged in classroom learning. After all, Learning is more than merely taking in facts or being able to recall information. When students walk through the door, you feel the hope and eagerness of teaching them something new. You select from a bag of tricks to enhance the clarity of the lesson being taught, and as teachers; we need to be creative in order to reach the hearts of your students. I've observed many teachers in the classroom devel...

By Betty Ko, Director, Lovely Taiwan Foundation Tricycles made of chairs from bus and classroom In the center of a busy and bustling Taipei, lies a cleverly titled building called the Creative Reuse Center (CRC). The CRC is a place that's based on creativity as well as sustainability - two features that are extremely important to Taiwan's future development. Only opened in October 17, CRC has received scrap materials, excess inventory, from more than 40 enterprises. The center will offer workshops teaching how to turn these materials into art. In November and December alone, we will be holding 20 workshops. Volunteers’ workshop Within one month of opening, CRC has experienced numerous visits   and attention from schools, families, businesses, media, and artists with favorable responses. As a director of the Lovely Taiwan Foundation, CRC’s funding organization, I’m proud to say that our inspiration came from my visit t...