Innovation Lab
All students in 1st through 8th grade take Innovation Lab as a class. The Innovation Lab is a hands-on, experiential workshop designed to facilitate and make visible the problem-solving process.
The Innovation Lab fosters and supports opportunities for learning through experimentation. It creates a space for students to make mistakes and learn from them.
Students develop technical skills in the Innovation Lab. They are exposed to new tools, materials, and methods, which enable them to approach problems from multiple perspectives.
Research suggests, however, that in makerspaces “technical skills and expertise are by-products in the service of the larger outcome of self-development”.*
In other words, our Innovation Lab promotes an asset- and growth-oriented mindset; the emphasis is on what students can do and can learn.
This enables students to develop a sense of personal agency and self-efficacy. Another integral part of the Innovation Lab is the emphasis on reflection. Students discuss and reflect upon the successes and challenges of their designs and solutions. This encourages students to think of learning as an ongoing, iterative process.
Above, a second grade student learns how to build a box, which includes using a ruler to measure 3-inch sections of wood, and setting up a mitre box work station to safely use the saw to cut the box.
*Clapp, Edward; Shari Tishman; Andrea Sachdeva; Jessica Ross (2015). “Maker-Centered Learning and the Development of Self: Preliminary Findings of the Agency by Design Project.” Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from http://www.agencybydesign.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Maker-Centered-Learning-and-the-Development-of-Self_AbD_Jan-2015.pdf.