Making Middle School: Cultivating Critical Literacy and Interdisciplinary Learning in Maker Spaces

By Steve Fulton and Cynthia D. Urbanksi

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780814100257

Steve Fulton

The Author, Steve Fulton, has published numerous books on Sports {Football & Baseball} History. He is the owner of Steve’s Football Bible LLC and you can see his work at www.stevesfootballbible.com.  He grew up in a rural farming town (Alden) in southern Minnesota and has been a guest on numerous radio stations over the years.  He is one of the pre-eminent authorities on Baseball and Football history.  His knowledge of Football history is second to none.

Book preview

NCTE Editorial Board

Steven Bickmore

Catherine Compton-Lilly

Antero Garcia

Jennifer Ochoa

Staci M. Perryman-Clark

Vivian Yenika-Agbaw

Kurt Austin, ex officio

Emily Kirkpatrick, ex officio

Staff Editor: Bonny Graham

Manuscript Editor: JAS Group

Interior Design: Jenny Jensen Greenleaf

Cover Design: Pat Mayer

Cover Image: iStock.com/izusek

NCTE Stock Number: 30667; eStock Number: 30674

ISBN 978-0-8141-3066-7; eISBN 978-0-8141-3067-4

©2020 by the National Council of Teachers of English.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright holder. Printed in the United States of America.

It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified.

NCTE provides equal employment opportunity to all staff members and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical, mental or perceived handicap/disability, sexual orientation including gender identity or expression, ancestry, genetic information, marital status, military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, pregnancy, citizenship status, personal appearance, matriculation or political affiliation, or any other protected status under applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Every effort has been made to provide current URLs and email addresses, but, because of the rapidly changing nature of the web, some sites and addresses may no longer be accessible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fulton, Steve, 1980- author. | Urbanski, Cynthia D., author.

Title: Making middle school : cultivating critical literacy and interdisciplinary learning in maker spaces / Steve Fulton, Cynthia D. Urbanski.

Description: Champaign, Illinois : National Council of Teachers of English, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: 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—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020000481 (print) | LCCN 2020000482 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814130667 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780814130674 (adobe pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Middle school education—Curricula. | Makerspaces. | Literacy—Study and teaching (Middle school) | Science—Study and teaching (Middle school)

Classification: LCC LB1628.5 .F85 2020 (print) | LCC LB1628.5 (ebook) | DDC 373.236–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000481

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000482

To our spouses for their support and

encouragement

To our children for their constant inspiration

to imagine possibilities

To our students who taught us about the

magic of make in the classroom

Contents

FOREWORD

L

il

B

rannon and

L

acy

M

anship

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1 The Sweet Spot

Make in Middle School

What Is a Maker?

Tinkering

Becoming Hacktivists

Making in the Sweet Spot

Making and the Curriculum

Making in the Real World: Tensions around Make and the Formal Space of School

Moving Forward

CHAPTER 2 Hacking Traditional Schooling: The Dialogic Classroom and the Notion of Play

An Epistemological Difference and Views of Writing

The Writing Workshop: A Brief History

Writing like Makers

A Critical View

Hacking Assessment: The Elephant in the Room

Conclusion

CHAPTER 3 Hacktivism in the Classroom

Hacktivism the Way We See It

Hacking Grammar Texts: Blackout Poetry

Cardboard Badges and a Critical Lesson about Activism

Modeling Activism

Some More Hacktivist Makes and Some Critical Thinking

Conclusion

CHAPTER 4 Beginning Make in Middle School: Science and Literacy Histories

The Science and Literacy History Make

Keys to the Make

Student Products and Reflections: Thinking about Maker Identities

Critical Moments: What We Learned from This Make

Conclusion

CHAPTER 5 Integrating Novel and Science Content through Building a Sustainable Cardboard City

The Cardboard City Make

Keys to the Make

Student Productions and Reflections

Critical Moments: What We Learned from This Make

Conclusion

CHAPTER 6 Paper Engineering: Pop-Up Books and Social Justice

Keys to the Make

Student Products and Reflections

Critical Moments: What We Learned from This Make

Conclusion

CHAPTER 7 A Few More Makes

Game Making

Toy Hack

Paper Circuitry

Making with Nature

Tapigami

Daybook Cover

Theme Parks

Conclusion

CHAPTER 8 Making STEAM: Diving In and Assessing It

Maker Spaces and Maker Classrooms

DIY and Make

Assessing the Mess: Hacking Assessment

An Example

On Content

On Making and Challenge

Diving In

Conclusion

APPENDIXES

REFERENCES

INDEX

AUTHORS

Foreword

The book in your hands is an engaging maker-space guide mashed up with stories of trying out make in middle school classrooms. Steve and Cindy, the authors, will inspire you to bring students' excitement and self-directed play back into your classroom. And the authors don't shy away from the realities of working with middle school students, those days when you wonder if some students are learning anything through creativity and discovery. In other words, this book is a window into real-deal writer-maker classrooms. The book details activities and logistics so that you can find many ideas to take back to your classroom, while also giving you just the right amount of theory, the whys for designing your classroom as a maker space—the whys you can share with parents and principals for designing your classroom as a studio for learning.

Faulty Connection: Making Parallel Play Work

We (Lil and Lacy) have spent a lot of time writing and making with Cindy and Steve in our collective work as teacher consultants for the National Writing Project (NWP). For some years you were as likely to find us with our daybooks (writer's notebooks) and laptops in a local coffee shop as surrounded by cardboard, batteries, tape, and LED lights in the Writing Project office, digging our daybooks out from under the box of colored markers! We would write-into-the-day together, write-into-our-work together, and figure out together how to re-create our language arts classrooms as maker spacers. Make was a culture we were sinking our boots into, finding others in the larger Charlotte, North Carolina, community who were interested in connecting science with design, engineering with art. We found a maker community in Discovery Place, a wonderful hands-on science museum in Charlotte, and through the national maker communities of the NWP and Exploratorium in San Francisco.

STEVE (playing with his daybook and some LED lights): It lit up!! Look! My daybook—when I open it, it lights up. All you need is a paper clip, a small LED, and … WAIT, it's out again. Huh? Do you think the connection is faulty?

LACY (writing): Oh, that sounds nice, yeah? The connection is faulty … like I want to use that as a metaphor in my essay … hold on, I'm writing it in my daybook.

CINDY (thinking out loud): Okay, so to make this work with kids … I think everyone can pull a little idea to play with out of their writing-into-the-day?

LIL (playing with squishy circuits at a table with Steve; see https://makezine.com/projects/squishy-circuits/): It has to do with the adhesives, Steve. It's the sticking of things together that seems to matter. We need to think about sticky stuff.

STEVE: Pass me the copper tape.

There is something intangible and nicely squishy about make, which is ironic since make is also all about tactile experiences and hard sciences like chemistry and engineering. Make is playing and working with stuff—like putting cardboard, tape, some fabric, markers, and scissors into the classroom and inviting students to imagine and create the world constructed by the stories they are writing or the novel they are reading. They are makers through their words, making poems and storyboards, chapter books and protest posters. Make and writing are all about tinkering—being okay with getting things wrong, even seeing the creative power in making mistakes. Make is the nonlinear pathway to productivity through play—playing with ideas, playing with materials, playing with words. you really can't have a culture of make if mistakes are things to be avoided.

In creating your maker space, students need to have choice, to be able to talk with others and reflect on their play and work. In a maker space, you have materials and tools and room to decide what you're going to do. you have the company of others who are making things, either with you or in parallel play. And you have the space to ask questions and to think and write about what you have created. A maker-space classroom is like a writing workshop, a place where maker-writers can use their creativity and challenge themselves to make or write things that matter to them, to try out new ideas without fear, to tinker, to freewrite or free-make, getting caught up in the moment of flow, where you lose track of time as words, ideas, and images-of-possibility race through your imagination. Maker spaces allow students to try things one way and then try it another way. The iterative process allows for new possibilities and for knowing dead ends.

We could put a whole book's worth of words into defining make, but hey, that's what you're about to read. So we invite you to join Steve and Cindy, who are deep into make. Jump into the culture, tinker with ideas that you find here, and be excited by the teaching and learning that you find. You are already a maker in your life. you make your classroom every day in relationship with students. This book will show you how Cindy and Steve created maker spaces with middle school students. Their inspiring and nuanced ideas will encourage you to begin or continue your journey of bringing make to your English language arts classroom. Because we have watched—and sometimes joined—Cindy and Steve inviting their students into make, we know you can use the pathways they have created to make learning spaces that invite authentic, student-driven, playful literacy engagements. Join Steve and Cindy to raise the voices of students and create access for students and fellow teachers to engage basic human needs for play, meaning, autonomy, and connection.

Lil Brannon

Lacy Manship

Acknowledgments

This book is a product of the work of the collaboration of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Writing Project (UNCCWP) and Discovery Place Science Museum, thanks to a grant from the National Writing Project. Without that rich partnership, this book would not have been possible. We especially want to thank UNCCWP teacher consultant Lacy Manship for bringing the concept of make to our writing project in the first place, and Lil Brannon, former UNCCWP director, for dreaming of this project and encouraging us to see it through to its completion. We also want to thank eighth-grade science teacher Tiffany Green, as well as Robert Corbin, Gabor Zsuppan, and Robbie Stanley from Discovery Place for imagining what make could look like in a public school classroom right alongside us. Finally, we want to thank our editor Kurt Austin, without whose guidance this book would not have been possible.

1

The Sweet Spot

Cindy had a sixth grader, Jason, who fit the school profile of an at-risk student. Jason was notorious in his elementary school for disrupting class and getting a whole lot of nothing accomplished when left to work by himself. His grades were Ds and Fs across the board. He happened to be a child with a 504 plan (a school intervention plan) for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These disorders manifested themselves in extreme ADHD behavior, which frustrated teachers and staff to no end. Because of his experience with many adults, Jason thought that most adults were not to be trusted and he needed to handle his business on his own. He thought of himself as a bad student. And yet, in a summer program, he was given the opportunity to make something, anything at all, that connected with The Golden Bull , the novel the group had read. Jason dove into the pile of cardboard and packing tape and created what he called a headdress for the priest of the fish god, since fish was the most important food source for Mesopotamia, where the novel was set. Jason spent hours working on his design, building, trying out, taking apart, reiterating. He researched papier-mâché and used paint to represent the materials that craftsmen in the novel had used: gold plate and lapis beads. And then he wrote a three-page reflection describing his process, why he used the materials he did, how he had put the project together, and what he learned about Ancient Mesopotamia. In the maker space, Jason was deeply engaged not only in making, but also in the academic world of Mesopotamia.

The out-of-school maker space was a new experience for Jason, a new context for learning. Jason's engagement with learning about Mesopotamia allowed him to improvise and enact a school identity