Create Your Own KidLab

Description of Create Your Own KidLab

This book explores the KidLab program at Neighborhood House Charter School (NHCS), where students do hands-on projects and experiments in a classroom setting that melds art and science, fantasy and reality. Part art studio, part museum, part classroom, and part laboratory, KidLab uses inquiry-based learning, ongoing experiments, and art and science to help students develop the skills and habits of mind critical to meeting science and technology standards.

In the first three years that Massachusetts administered its MCAS science and technology exam, the NHCS fourth graders consistently earned the second-best scores in Boston. Additionally, science scores improved each year at the school, improvements that NHCS teachers attribute to growth of KidLab

Beginning in the fall of 2000, a team of NHCS teachers—including the KidLab teacher and five classroom teachers who were intimately involved in the development of KidLab—spent a year working with the Project for School Innovation to explore and document all of the pieces that go into making KidLab a success at NHCS. The lessons that came out of this process are documented in Create Your Own KidLab, which is the third how-to book in PSI’s By Teachers for Teachers series.

Major Topics Covered
Science Instruction

Table of Contents for Create Your Own KidLab

1. An Introduction to KidLab at Neighborhood House Charter School

2. What is KidLab?
A little like a museum, a little like an art studio, a little like a classroom, a little like a laboratory, KidLab is a program in hands-on, minds-on science, art, and fun.

3. A Day in the Life of KidLab
Follow the story of a mini-golf lesson as it happens in KidLab. What’s the Big Idea? KidLab is a unique combination of project-based learning and transmission learning, science class and art class.

4. How Does KidLab Work?
Through six key features, KidLab helps build students’ inquisitiveness and academic persistence and makes them better creative thinkers and creative doers.

5. The KidLab Package
What you need to make your own KidLab—from room setup to scheduling suggestions.

6. The KidLab Teacher
Who you need to make your own KidLab—the key qualities needed in a KidLab teacher.

7. KidLab Lesson Plans
Nine samples from the collection of KidLab lesson plans, along with tips to make your own KidLab lessons.

Praise for Create Your Own KidLab Books, Videos and Workshops

The presenter was upbeat, positive, and energetic.
Participant
Create Your Own KidLab workshop

Having teachers who are really in the trenches and doing this helps make the theory concrete.
Participant
Create Your Own KidLab workshop

This workshop made me believe I could teach like this!
Participant
Create Your Own KidLab workshop

PSI Can Help You Implement These Strategies:

Customized Workshops
Our staff can come to your school to help you implement these school-tested hands-on science lessons and strategies .

School Visits
We can coordinate a visit to the Neighborhood House Charter School, so you can see their successful strategies first hand.

Planning Tools
PSI can help you create a personalized step-by-step strategy for implementing successful hands-on science practices in your school.

Workshop/Presentation Roundup

The Create Your Own KidLab team has led presentations at:
• National Science Teachers Association, 2003 and 2004
• Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003

…and customized workshops for:

• South Dakota Department of Education
• South Boston Harbor Academy, South Boston, MA
• Mather Elementary School, Boston, MA
• Cambridgeport School, Cambridge, MA