The Makerspace

We are thrilled to re-introduce the Makerspace to the PJA community! After a year-long hiatus, we have a new Maker Educator who has brought the Makerspace back to life. 

A wide range of skills is taught in the Makerspace. Students build important life skills around collaboration, teamwork, following directions, and completing tasks. They build resiliency and perseverance through experimentation, risk-taking, and learning from failure. And, of course, they develop creative thinking skills as they challenge themselves to design and build a variety of different projects. 

All of the students in 1st through 5th grades will be visiting the Makerspace on a regular basis to tackle design and engineering challenges. Students in all grade levels also visit the Makerspace to extend their classroom learning and incorporate STEM concepts (science, technology, engineering, math) into other parts of the school program. Two exciting examples of projects that took place in the Makerspace this week are fourth-graders creating large-scale masks that they will use as part of the Indigenous Peoples unit and Middle Schoolers in the Work for the World Exploratory who sewed face masks to donate to Portland Homeless Family Solutions.