Creating New Learning Experiences - Imagination Stations
/By Samantha Brewer, College for Social Innovation Intern, Fall 2019
For the past five weeks, the youth of St. Stephen’s Youth Programs have been participating in “Imagination Stations”, learning experiences designed to expose the youth to project-based learning that may not be included in a standard classroom curriculum. As the weeks progressed, the lesson plans built upon each other so that the youth were consistently learning new material. This semester the B-SAFE program offered six imagination stations each spanning five weeks. Developed as a part of my internship through the College for Social Innovation, each Imagination Station included four weeks of lesson plans, with the final week being an exhibition of the final product from each group.
Samantha Brewer, Fall 2019 College for Social Innovation Intern, leads youth in SSYP’s B-SAFE program in making paper!
The six imagination stations included the topics of; geodes, puppets, Rube Goldberg-simple machines, volunteering, reduce-recuse-recycle, and photography. Each program was described to the students who were then able to pick their top three choices. All of the youth were placed into their first or second choice which allowed for fifteen youth to be placed in each imagination station.
GEODE STATTION
The four weeks of lesson plans for the geode station included: learning what a geode was, and how they are created, painting what their fantasy geode would look like, creating geodes inside of eggshells by using a supersaturated solution, and then cracking open a real geode.
PUPPET STATION
The puppet station included: understanding what is in a story and the key elements of making a good story, creating a story and making their characters, creating their puppet characters, and making their background. During the fifth rotation the puppet station will be putting on a performance of their story.
RUBE GOLDBERG-SIMPLE MACHINES STATION
Rube Goldberg-simple machines will also be showing off their creations and teaching the rest of the youth what a simple machine is. To be able to teach the rest of the class and show off a functioning simple machine, they had to go through the lesson plans of learning what a simple machine is and watching videos of them, drawing up what they would want their simple machine to look like and what materials they would need, putting together their Rube Goldberg’s and finally the test run and fixing anything that may have been out of place.
VOLUNTEERISM STATION
The volunteerism station included learning about who can volunteer and in what ways they could volunteer in their own neighborhoods, making cookies for a local homeless shelter, running a free hot chocolate stand for the community, and creating a gift for someone special in their lives.
REDUCE-REUSE-RECYCLE STATION
Reduce-reuse-recycle was a station that many of the youth already knew a lot about, but were surprised by a lot of the new information they were presented. This station’s lessons included learning how to reduce-reuse-recycle in their everyday lives, making a board game out of recycled supplies, having a recycling relay race, and making paper out of recycled paper.
PHOTOGRAPHY STATION
Lastly, the photography station included the lessons about how light and angles affect picture outcomes, having a photography scavenger hunt, creating their photo album, and taking a restorative justice picture that involved the youth standing in front of a projector screen having the words they would describe themselves as projecting onto them.
Devising these lesson plans was something I had little to know experience in before coming to St. Stephen’s Youth Programs. It was a task I was excited to undertake, but also one that made me nervous about the fear of not making the lesson plans accessible, fun, and educational. As the semester progressed, I received continuous support from my mentor and was able to put together twenty-four successful lesson plans. Before each imagination station, I had to test out each of the activities and train the lead counselors to run them, ensuring they were prepared for their station. Creating these lesson plans has helped me become better at time management and has helped my own creativity evolve. I am very thankful for the experience SSYP has provided me and believe it will help me with my career goals working with youth in the nursing field.
Samantha Brewer is a College for Social Innovation Intern for the Fall 2019 Cohort. She was born and raised in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. She is a senior at the University of New Hampshire majoring in Nursing. Samantha is passionate about working with youth and is excited to see how her semester at St. Stephen’s Youth Programs will affect her future.