Innovation Hour!

This post is about my day spent at a local elementary school for innovation hour! This was an event held by one of the local schools in our town, and us, as UVIC students, got to volunteer and spend time with the kids while they worked their way through the stations that the SD5 design lab, the school’s teachers, my teacher, and likely more people came up with!

We had 5 stations; a button (pin) making station, a Chompsaw station at which they got to make airplanes made out of cardboard, a magic Rubix cube station- programmed to AI to help the students solve the Rubix cube, a Microbits station which was also AI powered watches that display different pictures when the students do different bodily movements (high fiving, running, jumping etc.), and an unplugged station that required the students to work in teams, draw pictures and discover the secret word (which was computer for the younger grades, but innovation for the older grades)!

I found all these stations to be so engaging for all the age groups/ grades of students, and for us volunteers as well!

I started my day off at the button (pin) making station, with the grade 5 and 6’s. They REALLY loved to make their pins personalized, but also for their school. We had a lot of students from the grade 6 classes make their pins say “grad 2026” which I found so cool and unique, not something I ever would have thought to do. They started this station by coloring/ designing a small circular piece of paper, then once their design was created they had to bring it over to one of the pin making machines (which was being supervised by 3 volunteers- a there were 3 machines), and they got to follow the directions on the machine (provided by the SD5 design lab), and make their pin! Every 15 minutes approx. the students switched stations, so each “group of about 15 students got a turn at each station.”

We then got a small break in which we debriefed with our entire class and talked about quirks or things we would change for the next station. Then we got to switch stations, and I chose to go to the microbit watch station, for the group of grades 2, 3, 4 and the rest of the grade 5’s! At this station the students were paired up into groups of 2, and one student was given a piece of paper with a pen, and the other student was given the AI powered watch. We gave them explanation on how if they do different movements with their bodies (high fives, running, jumping etc.) then a different image would appear on their watch. It was their partners job to watch what the partner with the watch was doing when they got that image, and they had to write that on their paper to complete the entire paper, they also really loved this station.

Finally, for my last station, I chose to challenge myself, and I took on the unplugged station. It was hard for me to comprehend what was even happening at this station, which made it a lot harder to explain to the students, especially considering they were grade 1 and kindergarten. In the long run I figured it out. We split the big group of 15 students into groups of 3 and gave each “team” a pinnie (red, green, purple etc.) once the groups were made, we split the groups up to each “station” A,B, and C. station A was where they had to draw 1 of 3 pictures- a cat, a house, or a car on a whiteboard. Once they were done at station A, they had to bring their whiteboard to one of their partners who was at station B and then return to their station (A). once partner B had their whiteboard at their station, they had to use small wooden shapes to “build their drawing”. Once their drawing was built, partner B had to bring the whiteboard AND their shapes to partner C. it was then partner C’s job to match up the drawing and the shapes with part of the secret word. (For example, cat was COM, house was PU, car was TER). Once partner C was done, they had to bring their whiteboard back to partner A, who had to erase the picture but KEEP their part of their secret message on, if they accidently erased it, they had to restart. Once their picture was erased, they had to draw one of the other 2 pictures that they have not already drawn. And continue the cycle, until their discovered the entire word. This took a lot of trial and error with the youngsters, but ended up going well, and they had a lot of fun!!

I’m so grateful for this experience and getting to be a part of it, I will be back next year!

Here are some photos from Seesaw:

Chompsaw station: