The Creative and Computational Thinking (CCT) curriculum focuses on five topics throughout the school year: digital citizenship, digital storytelling, design thinking, programming and robotics, and systems thinking.
Lower School Makers classes meet for 60 minutes every six-day cycle. These fun, hands-on learning classes are often centered around “unplugged” projects and introduce students to the foundational skills of coding, robotics, design thinking, digital storytelling, and systems thinking. These projects are often directly tied to the topics and studies explored in each grade’s Humanities classes. Through engaging, project-based activities, students develop problem-solving abilities, iterative skills (i.e., developing an idea, testing it, observing and gathering feedback, and trying again), creativity, and collaboration skills.
Middle School CCT classes meet for 90 minutes every six-day cycle. Our CCT curriculum teaches students computer science, engineering, and design, and often involves interdisciplinary connection with another subject area such as Art, Science, or Humanities. Some past CCT projects include: programming Arduino and building circuits with sensors to collect data from the physical world; coding video games in JavaScript (p5play); 3D printing spinning tops; laser cutting designs created by students in vector illustration software; and making stop-motion animated short films.
CCT classes are taught in the Makers Lab. Finding influence in a grassroots movement of inventors, tinkers, hackers, designers, and entrepreneurs that has grown exponentially over the last decade, the Makers Lab provides a safe place to foster creativity, collaboration, problem solving and exploration of ideas. Students from Kindergarten to Eighth Grade are able to explore concepts and principles from other classes, independent research, collaboration with others, and the power of their own imaginations. Some of our most used machines in the Makers Lab are 3D printers, an Epilogue laser cutter, sewing machines, thermo-formers, and vinyl cutters, as well as microcontrollers and sensors for physical computing.
Rooted in inquiry-based learning and “learning by doing,” CCT challenges students to address questions and challenges facing them, their communities and their society. CCT provides an opportunity for students to integrate their passions, knowledge, and creativity to design and build the solutions to problems they face. Building something with their own hands helps students uncover knowledge more deeply than rote or surface-level learning required for test-taking. In addition, students learn the value of making mistakes, debugging, trial-and-error, failing fast, and iteration of designs and processes.
As technologies have become more accessible, innovative, and cost-effective, students are able to explore concepts that were once available only to experts in the field. Building and programming robots to pick up objects or respond to obstacles, creating musical instruments using a microcontroller, or designing and coding an online game are only a few ways innovative technologies are being used in our CCT courses.
As digital citizens, students explore issues like digital footprints, privacy, internet safety, and communication to ensure we are responsible and engaged citizens online. By creating podcasts, documentaries, stop-animations, movies or graphic novels, students can unleash their storytelling potential. In a world where humans have for centuries created man-made solutions inventions, CCT provides opportunities for students to create solutions by literally placing tools in the hands of students.
Â鶹´«Ã½ has a 1:1 program where each student in Kindergarten through Second Grade is assigned an iPad, and each student in Third and Fourth is assigned a Chromebook (these items stay at school). Middle School students are provided a Chromebook that they are allowed to take to and from school. The Makers Lab is also equipped with Macbooks for students to use during CCT.
Students are not permitted to have cell phones or smart watches during the school day. Lower School students who happen to bring a device or a smart watch to school will have them kept with the Head of Lower School til the end of the school day. As Middle School students enter the building each morning, they seal their devices (phones as well as smart watches) in a Yondr pouch. The Yondr pouch remains sealed in their locker and/or backpack until dismissal from school or after afterschool activities, at which time they will unlock their Yondr pouch at an unlocking station or with a designated adult before leaving the building.
