During the Innovation Hour Event, I volunteered from 8:30-12:15 and worked at the stations Unplugged: Brain in a Bag and Button Making. The grades that came through were 5-6 and 3-4.

In the morning we were helping set up the Brain in a Bag, and learned that it was a new station, and that we’d be learning how to make it more efficient each time a group came through. Right away I became nervous because it was a station that took me a moment to understand and I didn’t feel comfortable explaining it until I felt completely sure about it. But, our group dove right in and we tried our best to explain it properly and modify and adapt where needed. Some struggles included students not understanding what the station was, sometimes they were done early and we didn’t know how to rotate them, and some students were just simply bored. Although, it was super rewarding near the end when we started to get into a groove and routine of explaining and helping the students with the station! Things I learned included: explaining things properly and fully so students understand, try and answer all their ‘why’ questions, your always on the move, and there’s always room to improve/fix something.

The next station I was at was the button making station and I thought it was super fun! Our job was to explain to the students what we were making and what supplies you could use to make your button. This station had a lot of class management involved because the students wanted to come up and make the buttons right away, which crowded the table and held up the line. So we decided to have them come up in groups of 3-4 to make their design. This worked well until we realized that the students who were waiting and the ones that were done were bored, so group member decided to try and play some games like charades with them, while me and my other group member helped the kids complete their button making. It was so neat to see their creativity with their designs and how much work they put into them, and how excited they were when we would let them pull the handle and spin the circles on the button making machine.

I thought this event was super cool and had a lot of work put into it to make it happen for the students. We were told that this is what carnivals, assemblies, and other school hosted events would kind of be like, which is busy. I think I gained a lot more experience at this event and can’t wait to help out with more!