At Monday's Board of Education Meeting, Matt Berkshire, Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, and Tonya Frickey, K-12 Technology Specialist, presented about the Collab Lab, which was created in partnership with Laura Calvino, Audra Misuraca, Michele Neary, Carrie Rath, and Melissa Persico.
The Collab Lab is a STEM learning lab that integrates social studies and science. Teachers can bring their classes to the Collab Lab to participate in activities that are connected to standards that can be harder to achieve in the classroom. The ultimate goal is to create meaningful, interdisciplinary learning experiences that spark curiosity, support curriculum, and meet students where they are.
As a team, they design hands-on, engaging learning experiences that connect curriculum, curiosity, and creativity. Activities like experiments, science investigations, discovery stations, instructional videos, interactive displays, and story walks. All activities are aligned with NYS Learning Standards, ensuring meaningful, standards-based learning experiences. They also reinforce social and emotional learning and academic skills.
Some of this year’s activities have included:
- learning about the life cycle of a monarch butterfly (with actual caterpillars and a story walk)
- exploring the solar system with planets represented in a scaled model
- creating a cloud in a bottle to learn about clouds and the steps of the water cycle
- studying erosion through stream tables
- learning about the life cycle of a frog with real frog eggs
- technology integration like Spheros, Ozobots, Indy Cars, Osmos, and Lego Spike kits
- engineering and racing wind cars made out of recycled materials
- measuring the absorbency of paper towels, the length of yarn, and the volume of water to prepare for 5th grade state tests
- digital escape rooms
- squid dissections
- learning about the events leading up to the revolution in honor of the 250th celebration
The Collab Lab is a space for exploration, not perfection. It provides kids with hands-on, real-world experiences and the opportunity to think like scientists and engineers through curiosity and collaboration.
Todd Hilgendorff shared that the Collab Lab is one of his favorite places to visit because there’s so much constantly happening - and the kids understand everything that’s going on. You can ask them a question, and they can tell you in detail what they’re doing and why. He said this is the future of education, and it’s what we need to be focusing on as a district.