Nine-year-old Sean stood in my classroom doorway and surprised me by saying, "I wish I lived here." I had just returned with yet another load of drinking straws to the Think Tank, the combination discovery room and lab that I design and direct at Kent Gardens Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. The boy probably coveted a Bucky Fuller geodesic dome made from the straws and paper clips—an item the kids leaving the room were wearing on their heads, showing their teachers, and displaying proudly. Clearly he wanted in to get his hands on something.
On any given day, my students might be constructing a geodesic dome from straws or even with three-foot wooden dowel rods, or they might be engrossed in everything from robotics to how to identify animal footprints. All 620 children at Kent Gardens are scheduled to come to this room for up to an hour every other week. Many come more often, however. Faculty members and volunteer Room Guides (20-30 parents and community members) are trained to help out.
All on Task!
The Think Tank is a large room with a light and open atmosphere. A wall of windows lines the length of it, under which open boxes of project materials are shelved. Rugs, pillows, and plants are scattered about. Mozart or other music is often playing.
Walk into a lab in progress and you see children engaged in a variety of group or individual activities. They may be working on a project at one of the round tables or at "Think It! Do It!"—our invention center. Some may be collaborating on "20 Questions," comfortably propped up on pillows. Others may be searching for objects to view under a microscope, making architectural drawings, or examining the way a door knob works. The spirit and tempo will vary from loud and active to pensive and quiet, but all the students seem to be having fun while working hard. As one 1st grade teacher exclaimed during a visit, "Look, they're all on task!"
A Synthesis of Theories
The Think Tank evolved from our principal's desire for a place that would "take the lid off" the learning experiences of our K–6 students, emphasizing student-directed, hands-on learning and critical and creative thinking. The room embodies our administration's decision to establish Kent Gardens as a Focus School in Fairfax County—a new process whereby some schools identify themselves as having a specific emphasis. Ours engages multiple intelligences and critical and creative thinking as a foundation for learning.
The Think Tank synthesizes many ideas and theories, some ages old (Socratic questioning), some more recent, such as John Dewey's call for learning through doing. We've adopted aspects of Project Spectrum (Krechevsky 1991), linking assessment to meaningful, real-world activities and emphasizing children's strengths. We've incorporated aspects of the Flow Activities Room (Csikszentmihalyi 1991), one feature of Indianapolis's experimental Key School. The Think Tank has "flow" as it offers children a choice of diverse, challenging activities and opportunities to develop and practice process-oriented skills and the capacity for sustained absorption in an activity.
Above all, the program—like the Key School's Flow Activities Room—is based on Howard Gardner's theory of eight multiple intelligences. We design and select projects that, as Gardner said, "recognize and nurture all of the varied human intelligences, and all the combinations of intelligences" that make us so different from one another (1987).
Through questioning, we identify the intelligences that a project enlists. We generally do not ask questions to identify a student's intelligences—that is, which strengths make up his or her cognitive profile. Because intelligences develop over time, we don't want to risk labeling students. As much as possible, we leave the door open for growth in all areas.
To nurture this growth, we design some projects to use a student's strengths or to get children to explore areas where they are weaker and may feel less comfortable—that is, we layer intelligences in creative ways. For example, in our architectural drawing center, students learn to make drawings (visual-spatial), first mastering the concept of a bird's-eye view (mathematical-logical). As they create dream home plans, we encourage them to label each room (verbal-linguistic). We may ask them to brainstorm together and combine their efforts (interpersonal) before they build three-dimensional models (bodily-kinesthetic) for yet another shift logically and visually.
Layering also occurs when children learn to identify the bones of our full-scale human skeleton. They use tags that carry the medical name with its phonetic spelling. They may continue with exercises to identify bones in movement. Or, they may build a bone in clay while looking at the skeleton. The project thus layers innate curiosity with verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences.
In a project called "Watch the Drop," students create pathways for marbles to drop with PVC tubes on a Velcro backboard. Using visual-spatial, mathematical-logical, bodily-kinesthetic, and almost always interpersonal intelligence, they observe the arch of a falling marble to figure out where to place the tubes and spaces to catch it as it falls.
We select many projects to help children develop skills in areas to which they may not otherwise be exposed. For example, both boys and girls have learned principles of building, engineering, and computer programming—even embroidery, weaving, and chess. With regular visits to the lab, students master quite a few skills over time.
Connections and Continuity
Activities in our Think Tank don't occur in a vacuum; everything is fully integrated with all other coursework. In fact, faculty members and Room Guides help students discover connections and link learning in the lab to their school curriculum and to their home and community experiences.
All faculty members are welcome to use this room as a teaching facility, either during the students' scheduled visits or whenever else the room is available. Specialists in various areas—English as a second language, speech, occupational therapy, and counseling, for example—may also use the Think Tank and its projects to reinforce their learning objectives.
Through its format of open inquiry, the lab frees both students and educators from their ongoing classroom responsibilities. Students can work quite independently on educationally purposeful projects. They have time to personalize and restructure learning as they make sense of things, using their own initiative.
Some students continue projects in their classrooms or at home and teach others what they have learned in the lab. Younger children often build on projects that older children have left in the lab. When possible, students of various ages work together.
The Think Tank on Wheels program literally brings lab projects into each classroom. Each month, I review upcoming curriculum plans for a particular grade, then roll a cart into the lab and select new projects based on that review. This not only furthers continuity of learning but also refreshes the material in the lab. Instead of merely cataloging materials, we maintain a dynamic flow of information throughout the school.
With my background in fine arts and design, it was natural to make this lab a highly hands-on, process-oriented place. It's not unlike an art studio or college art course where students and teachers are taking risks and experiencing frustration, but also gaining skills and making breakthroughs. As David H. Porter, president of Skidmore College, describes the experience, For starters, we believe that life is both richer and more fun for those who are open to new possibilities, challenges, and experiences. We believe that such openness is learned by practice, by watching the behavior of others, and by surviving initial anxiety to arrive at the joy of discovery (1996).
Questioning and Challenging
To extend the learning experience, we pose essential questions—questions that stimulate creative problem solving and critical, higher-order thinking while connecting learning to our county's required program of studies. We are careful, however, to wait for the right time before presenting students with further challenges, particularly if they are deeply engaged in a project on their own. We must always ask ourselves where the child's activities might lead if we say nothing. When we ask questions, we ask them in such a way that once the lightbulb goes on, students know that they have arrived at the answer or solution through their own efforts.
In this less structured setting, students search out discovery questions for themselves. Consider our Interview project, which layers verbal-linguistic and interpersonal intelligences. A student may ask a friend or teacher, "How are worms and spaghetti alike?" The student does this using a tape recorder, a blank cassette, and a book of divergent questions, as inspired by Nancy Johnson (1990). The student records answers such as "They both can have something on top of them, like dirt or sauce" or "They both can be hard and stiff." Thus begins a brainstorming process. At this point I might eavesdrop, adding, "Yes! When they become dehydrated, they are both dry and stiff! What's the next question?" My student continues with "How are landfills like time capsules?"
In our Strawberry Basket Center, questioning has direct links to grade level curriculum. As children stack the baskets to create towers or walls, we ask for predictions: "How many baskets do you think are in this tower?" "Can you predict how many groups of 20 there are?" Next, we work on multiplication and division to check which estimate comes closest. If all goes well, the bonus question becomes: "Well, if each basket were now holding eight strawberries, how many. . . ?"
Ways of Being Smart
With all classes, we discuss the many ways of being intelligent. As children learn that experiences they love embody one or more intelligences, their eyes brighten—they've found a place. Children need to know that the school will respect and support their own particular strengths. Such support empowers them to take risks and to be open to exploring new areas.
As students exhibit various skills in the lab, they feel that their teachers and peers appreciate their intelligences. We often hear comments such as "Look at this!" or "I did it!" There is no need to reinforce a student with statements such as "You appear very highly visual-spatial with a strong interpersonal intelligence!" Instead, we discuss how students demonstrate different ways of being smart as they work with various projects.
I may ask a 4th grader directly, "What intelligences are you using as you build this bridge with Kapla blocks (flat four-by-one-inch wooden blocks)?" My student replies, "Math smart, body smart, picture smart, and people smart." She therefore tells me that by working with these blocks, she is learning what it is to be smart and also gaining an understanding of the dynamic of employing different intelligences.
I may then elaborate: "Right! Mathematical-logical because you are thinking about how to distribute the weight and reach the other tower without support underneath, visual-spatial because you are working with patterns that you see, bodily-kinesthetic because this takes fine motor balancing, and interpersonal because you are working and making decisions together."
The traditional emphasis on verbal and mathematical intelligences has been limiting for everyone. (As a young artist, I often received the subtle message that I was not smart.) In the Think Tank, students get the whole story—they understand that in varying degrees, each of us possesses all eight of Gardner's intelligences and has the capacity to develop them all. We empower students' learning when we tell them, "You have within you all the ways of being smart—let's develop and use them all."
The Think Tank lets children explore activities much as they did when learning to speak, walk, or tie a shoe. They find themselves in a familiar place, performing hands-on activities that build on their natural ways of learning. This is how we reach our students. It is why Sean, my hallway visitor, felt right at home.
