Behind the Course:
Our Creator's Space
The Our Creator’s Space program will merge the concept and practice of MAKING in education with the understanding that God is the Creator of the Universe, the Author of truth and the Designer of beauty—the ultimate engineer. Creation, redemption, and re-creation are foundational to our Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs, and as such will be woven throughout this program, as learners seek to create solutions to real-life problems.
Our Creator’s Space will be a dynamic, ever-growing program that can be expanded in multiple ways in the future with a particular focus on STEAM curriculum activities (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics). The goal is to encourage creative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning by harnessing technology applications and tools while providing the continued support that is needed by educators and students.
We seek to profoundly equip our church's next generation through fostering a collaborative community of educators. It is our hope that the enhanced content presented with Our Creator’s Space will act as a springboard to inspire sustainable knowledge sharing among our denomination's educational professionals.
Essential Components
The program is envisioned with three essential components: 1) STEAM curriculum planning and delivery from a Seventh-day Adventist biblical point of view, 2) small school teacher support, and 3) planning and implementation for technology integration in the classroom. The program will provide high quality scaffolding within a framework that ensures success both for teachers and students.
1) STEAM Curriculum
Each week a single well planned Creator lesson will be prepared in advance for grades a) 1-4 and grades b) 5-8. Each lesson will be mapped to and provide evidences of the NAD curriculum standards. Teachers will easily be able to identify the standards used. The lessons will not replace the curriculum that teachers are currently using but will augment their current curriculum with STEAM activities. There will be a total of 32 vibrant and engaging lessons that require the application of science, technology, engineering, art, and math skills based on a biblical foundation. The curriculum will be sequenced in line with the NAD small school curriculum guides. The 7e model of inquiry will be used to outline the lesson plan and active learning strategies: elicit, engage, explore, explain, elaborate, extend. A typical week may look like the following:
Monday - Elicit and Engage - A video describing the problem to be solved or inquiry to be explored is available to be viewed by teachers and students. The video is meant to capture students’ attention, encouraging them to think about and be interested in the subject matter, raise questions, and access prior knowledge. Teachers elicit student prior understandings and encourage transfer of knowledge to the new situation presented for the week’s inquiry. Enthusiasm is key. The students should have the opportunity to ask and attempt to answer, “What do you think…? “Why did you see….?” “What would it look like if….?” and “How would it be different if…?” type questions. Questions are intended to begin the conversation. Art?
Tuesday - Explore - Students work together to generate ideas and apply innovative strategies. The explore phase of the learning cycle provides an opportunity for students to observe, record data, isolate variables, design and plan experiments, create graphs, interpret results, develop hypotheses, and organize their findings. Engineering and Technology?
Wednesday - Explain - Scientific principles and mathematical thinking is discussed. Students are introduced to models, laws, and theories during the explain phase of the learning cycle. Students summarize results in terms of these new theories and models. The teacher guides students toward coherent and consistent generalizations, helps students with distinct scientific vocabulary, and provides questions that help students use this vocabulary to explain the results of their explorations. The distinction between the explore and explain components ensures that concepts precede terminology.
Thursday - Elaborate - Evaluate - Students are encouraged to move beyond what has been done in the past and to apply and evaluate innovative ideas. The elaborate phase of the learning cycle provides an opportunity for students to apply their knowledge to new domains, which may include raising new questions and hypotheses to explore. This phase may also include related numerical problems for students to solve. The evaluate phase of the learning cycle continues to include both formative and summative evaluations of student learning. On Thursday afternoons, after school hours, a live session will be held with the participating teachers. In this session, a preview of the coming week will be given and needed supplies reviewed.
Friday - Extend - Students are encourage to ask “Who needs this and why?” types of questions and to prepare and deliver presentations for those audiences. Students respond to these questions and communicate what they know about the scenario(s) presented as well as their prior conceptions and understandings.
2) Small School Teacher Support
In order to support small schools teachers, the program will include Lifelines. Lifelines is an extension of the NAD support manual for small schools teachers but is extended here to include an infrastructure to connect teachers from all participating classrooms and encourage collaboration, and community building across the educational system. This will be done by weekly video conferencing sessions where teachers can meet with the facilitator(s) of the program as well as experts across the system. Additionally, weekly Mini-Tech courses for teachers in 1, 2 teacher schools will be created and available on the Adventist Learning Community where these teachers can take advantage of the professional development and received Continuing Education credit.
3) Technology Integration in the Classroom
An iPad initiative is included in the planning and execution of the program using a 1:1 approach. As teachers in small schools typically do not have ready access to technical assistance a Technology Help Center will be established at Southern Adventist University. This call in and video conference in center will be open from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern time zone Monday through Thursday. The center will be supervised by a full time SAU staff/faculty member and manned by university students. During year 1, a portion of the requested funds will be used to cover the expense of these student workers. Starting year 2, this expense will be passed on to the schools, conferences, or unions participating.