Meet Lee Kessner
This guest post, documenting an ambitious and engaging STEAM project, was sent in by Nationally Board Certified Teacher, Lee Kessner.
Lee is a 4th grade teacher at the Haskell STEAM Magnet School, located in Granada Hills, California. Back in December of 2023, she reached out to ask us whether our LED stickers required resistors (they do not), as she was planning to create a large mural with her students.
We are grateful to Lee for documenting this inspiring project and sharing it with us here!
Can you tell us a little about your school and your self?
Haskell is a magnet school located in Granada Hills, California. Because we are magnet, we draw our population from all over Los Angeles and this enables us to have a diverse student population. Additionally, we are a full-Title 1 school.
I have been teaching 4th grade at Haskell for the past 6 years and have been fortunate enough to be able to exercise my creativity when teaching my students, and in return, they are able to exercise their creativity well-beyond the limits of mine. I believe in purposeful implementation of STEAM principles and have seen how hands-on exploration of standards-based phenomena allows students to take agency over their learning and provides them with meaningful learning opportunities.
After doing some research into creative ways to explore circuits and energy, I came across the Chibitronics site and my learning began. I explored all of the amazing projects that had been posted and started experimenting. I then took the interests of my students and guided them in a way that incorporated circuits based on the amazing Dandelion Painting by Jie Qi.
I have not taken any courses, but I have watched a lot of video tutorials. I will be taking my first Chibitronics course offered through Infosys this summer. … I LOVE these products for my students!
What can you tell us about the Pollinator Garden project you did with your students?
This year my students spent a lot of time working with circuits in a creative fashion. In an effort to tie a creative circuit project together with our science and environmental standards, my 4th grade class created a circuit map that demonstrates an empathetic pollinator garden.
First, my class created a cloth mural (painted on cotton). The mural is an artistic rendering of a pollinator garden as it is seen by bees, butterflies, and pollinator bird species. After creating the mural, my students created hardware on a 3D printer that would connect wooden dowels that would serve as a stretcher for the fabric.
Underneath the fabric, students laid down copper tape and Chibitronics Circuit Stickers in three different colors (Red, Yellow, and Blue).
They formed a path that would show the flight of the various pollinators within the pollinator garden. Each of the three colors of the LED stickers represented a different category of pollinator.
Students were broken up into groups of 3-4 and each group created the circuit pathway for a portion of the mural.
Finally, students coded the circuit stickers using the Chibi Chip and clip.
Along the way students participated in light and vision studies using spectrometers, wrote informational reports, and created infographics to display information. They had so much fun creating!
