Making Middle School: Cultivating Critical Literacy and Interdisciplinary Learning in Maker Spaces [Minkštas viršelis]

"Explores the intersections between critical literacy and science through make-based activities in the middle school classroom, allowing students to work in community to challenge themselves, be creative, and wonder about their world"--

Fulton, a public school teacher and consultant, and Urbanski, a freelance ethnographer, writer, and teacher consultant, describe their experiences with making in middle school classrooms to foster critical literacy and interdisciplinary learning. They emphasize the principles of connected learning, as well as using informal learning spaces, and discuss their definitions of making, connected learning, hacktivism, and middle school; the theory supporting their work, how they are hacking traditional schooling, and how the maker classroom has roots in constructivism and the writing workshop; the concept of hacktivism and how it works in their classrooms; stories of making in classrooms using student examples in the areas of science and literacy history, novels and science content, and engineering and social justice; making ideas across the curriculum; and assessment. Annotation ©2020 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Fulton and Urbanski explore the intersections between critical literacy and science through maker spaces alongside their middle school students.

Making Middle School is the story of eighth-grade English teacher Steve Fulton and science teacher Tiffany Green’s explorations of the intersections between critical literacy and science through maker spaces alongside their students. Steve and Tiffany, with thinking partner Cindy Urbanski, use the idea of make to center student learning in their classrooms as well as to democratize learning, back-loading English and science standards while front-loading the current focus on STEAM.Making—following one’s own desire to create—is based on principles of connected learning, where students work in community to challenge themselves, to be creative, and to wonder about their world. Making represents a pathway directed by the learner and allowed to unfold organically, without a scripted route or destination. By looking up close at the real work of teachers and students, Fulton and Urbanski illustrate the rich and real applications of a make-based approach in today’s middle school classrooms.