RAFT Hands-On Education

By Jeanne Lazzarini, RAFT Math Activity Developer & Mentor, and the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, NCTM Create a classroom that engages you and your kids. Make your room a place that you like be in.  Some suggestions include: Fill your classroom with examples of the real world. Dedicate a bulletin board to certain topics. Include a “Problem of the Week.” Create a center including puzzles, thinking games, and manipulatives that could be explored by students. Develop a plan to connect with parents. Provide parents with a welcome letter followed by monthly newsletters that include a brief overview of topics their children will be learning about in the coming month. For the younger grades, a take-home “manipulative of the month” made out of sheets of craft foam or other inexpensive material could also be shared. Suggest activities for parents to do at home to reinforce the concepts and activities that the students are investigating in...

Twelve STEAM Innovation Leaders from the Campbell Unified School District (CUSD) came to RAFT earlier this month to create new motivational activities for the start of the school year!  They met in grade-level teams with our RAFT Education staff to generate new ideas using RAFT materials that will motivate, challenge, and inspire their students. Each team was given a RAFT Makerspace-in-a-Box containing a wide variety of upcycled materials. They were asked to create a Design Challenge that directed students to solve the instructor’s challenge with the materials from the box. The Design Challenges addressed an engineering standard appropriate for each grade level and could include standards from other subjects. Here are some of their exciting back-to-school ideas: ************************************************************************************* Grades TK – 2 Engineering Standard: K-2-ETS1-1:  Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situa...

RAFT does not carry these glasses, but you do not need to look at the sun to enjoy the experience of a solar eclipse. As you may know the Bay Area will see about 75% of the eclipse on Monday, August 21. The eclipse will be at its fullest at approximately 10:15 that morning. We are hoping there will not be any cloud cover! Even if there are overcast skies, students will be able to observe the darkening effect in the sky. If the sun is shining, you can do activities with your students such as observing the rays cast by the sun on a plain surface, holding up a piece of peg board, a colander, or anything with round holes in it. Students will see tiny images of the eclipsed sun without having to look up into the sky. They can also observe other shadows and images of the sun’s rays coming through leaves on a tree or shrub, or even used their own hands, fingers splayed and over-crossed, to observe these images. If possible, have your students do the same activities at the same time of day ...

Written by Peter Holley, Middle School Orchard teacher and this year's Makerspace Cohort Lead Teacher The maker space at Orchard School came into being this year with a community build in October.  Although our space is small, it is well put together and well stocked.  Several teachers have had the opportunity to use the maker space this year and we hope that more teachers will discover the maker space and use it in their lessons in the coming year.  This year we had a cohort of teachers that was comprised of those that are passionate about making.  We met together monthly to learn how to use the space effectively and to incorporate making into our curriculum.  Each teacher in the cohort used the maker space with their classes and all had a positive experience and indicate that they hope to use it more frequently in the coming year.  In the cohort we learned about a design process developed at Stanford called “design thinking”.  In this ...

Are You Burned Out? - What To Do Now By Myesha Mebane, Science Department Chair at Martin Luther King Jr. Junior High School It’s May and you may be experiencing “Burn Out”, what do you do now? It is too late to consider what you could have done to prevent burn out in the first place. What do you do? Symptoms of Burn Out You are exhausted. Your energy level is low and it is apparent because everyone says that you look terrible. You have pushed your professional clothing to the back of your closet and thought about wearing those Saturday sweats on casual Friday. Your tolerance for having to repeat your classroom expectations and your patience with the little noises and frequent giggles is gone and you have resulted to referrals to the office. Every single day you think about calling in sick because you know you need a mental health day. 10 ways to get you through the last few weeks of school There are a lot of things that you can do to make sure that you don’t cras...

By Sandra Woodard, RAFT Membership & Green Room Associate St. Patrick’s Day has been celebrated in Ireland for over 1,000 years, but it was mostly a religious celebration of the Saint’s life and deeds. Today, many people of Irish ancestry in the U.S., and many others who consider themselves “Irish for the Day” spend March 17 th each year wearing green, watching parades and otherwise participating in this celebration of all things Irish.           St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, brought Christianity to Ireland in about the early 5 th century. Patrick was from a wealthy family which lived in Roman Britain. He was brought to Ireland as a slave at about age 16. Having spent about half dozen years there he finally made his way to freedom, eventually entered the Church of Rome, and was sent to Ireland as a bishop. There, he is credited with performing many baptisms, and converting people to the Catholic Church. St. Patrick ...