FabMaker Spotlight: Literature, Robots, Designing, Oh My!
This FabMaker Studio Spotlight is from Susan Spigelmire, a kindergarten teacher at Harvest Valley Elementary in California. She connected the dots with FableVision Learning through the Carly and Adam Elementary STEM Teachers Club.
It all started with a STEM literacy unit on the “Three Billy Goats Gruff” by Paul Galdone. A team of teachers and I got together and wrote a lesson in which Kindergarten students would build a bridge that the three goats (using three different sized blocks) would go over and under which a troll would fit.
We incorporated many Common Core State Standards, such as speaking and listening, writing, positional words, and geometry standards related to the 3D shapes used in the bridge design. We also incorporated NGSS standards in this lesson. Students had to sketch a design of their bridge and come up with a material list. Then as a group, they built the bridge, tested it with the goats, and made changes when necessary.
This lesson was a hit with our students. However, after attending Wonder Workshops webinars, I wanted to incorporate their Dash and Dot robots. Dot became the troll and Dash the Billy Goats. With this change, students need to construct a bridge that will be strong enough to support Dash. The robot is coded to go up, across, and back down the other side. Dot, the troll, has to fit under the bridge and be coded to talk when dash crosses the bridge. This lesson encourages students to think about designing the bridge and surrounding setting details. It also gets them to record their own sounds into Dot and Dash using language from the story and encourages them to retell the story in sequential order. This lesson will take a few days as there are a lot of details involved.
During my online research of STEM, I found Carly and Adam and their Facebook page “Elementary STEM Teachers Club,” where I attended a Facebook Live with Andrea Calvin. During this Facebook event, I learned about the fabulous Fabmaker Studio. So of course I signed up, bought a new digital craft cutter, and got busy designing.
My first designs were basic, but as I played with FabMaker Studio, my designs improved, including my goat and troll. From there I was inspired to design more storybook characters such as the three little pigs and the wolf, and the three bears.
I am currently writing lesson plans for those fairy tales. As my students get better at designing, they will use FabMaker Studio to design characters and setting details from other popular stories we read in class.
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