Wood Projects in the Classroom 3: Student Designs*

 Kids love to build.  I have Keva, Kinex, Lego, and Tinkertoy in my classroom, but the most popular building material in my class was this big bag of off cuts I had that were leftovers from my garage wood shop.  These off cuts were so, so popular.  

And they had to go.

Like any great (and failed) relationship, it started off slowly.  No one noticed the lumpy bag in the corner filled with dusty misshapen wood.  During Choice Time, students gravitated toward other centres and other building materials.  Then one day, this quiet kid noticed the lonely bag in the corner and took a chance on it.  He built a little ramp for cars, and shared it with the class during check in time.  The next day, a few kids joined him and all was right with the world.  

By the next week, all the building kids and a few other converts were right into the big blue bag.  I brought in another bag of off cuts that were cluttering up my garage, but it took no time for those to get grabbed up too.  And then the fighting began.

Some students hoarded and hid their favourite pieces.  They argued with each other and with me over the off cuts, especially when it was time to clean up.  It was loud, it was sloppy, but most of all, it was unpleasant.  My sharing, caring, cooperative community turned into greedy, suspicious hoarders.  I'd had enough, so I decided that the off cuts had to go.  

At a class meeting, I told my students the problem, and asked them why they didn't have the same problem with other building materials.  The students admitted that the off cuts were bigger so they could make really tall structures or long ramps, and because the off cuts were not all the same shape or same size (a la Keva or Lego) they could do some really unusual things with them.  We'd tried many group and individual problem solving strategies over the off cuts situation, but I decided it was time to end our relationship with the off cuts.  

The 3 Pieces of Wood Project

Instead of just taking the two big bags of off cuts home (I was trying to reduce the clutter in my garage, remember?), I tasked the students with a design project:  

• What could you make from 3 pieces of wood? 
• Design something that would not end up as garbage, but would HELP the world.

In turns, each student chose 3 pieces of wood (2 short and one long).  They designed their creation on paper, then they glued their pieces together.  I gave them demonstrations of what glued well (face to face works better than end to end, etc.).  Each student presented their creation and the rest of the class gave them feedback.

Student Designs

Student V

I designed a bookshelf.  I chose this design because my dad bought this other shelf, but he didn’t have the nails for it. This will help the world better by making more room for books!

Student T

I made a chicken decoration for my grandma and my grandpa.  

I used 3 pieces of wood. One looks like a chicken because I like chicken. The chicken is SO cute.

This makes me very happy. D thinks it’s cool too. A thinks it is really good.

Student I

I designed a small resting place for birds.

The way it works is you attach a string to it, hang it on a string to it, hang it on a branch, and then a bird comes along and sits on it. 

The way it will improve the world is by helping birds rest.

This makes me feel good. 

Student E

I designed a stuffy holder.

The way it works is I put my stuffies on the flat part.

It helps so my room is not filled with stuffies.

I enjoyed making this.

Student D

I designed two things in one:  you can put your pictures at the top and hang your coat on the bottom. 

This will make the world a better place because I always leave my jacket on the floor. Now I can hang it up. This will make my mom happy.

 I took it home and painted with acrylic paint because other materials did not have the exact colours. 

End Thoughts

It was awesome.  Students were very thoughtful about their designs, they gave feedback, the way they supported each other was amazing, they treated each other better, they learned a whole bunch of things, and I got rid of a bunch of garage clutter.

*The events described in this post happened last year before COVID.

T gives D some positive feedback on his Shark design.

Wood Projects in the Classroom 2: Teacher DIY

Unskilled labour

My worst subjects in junior high school were Woodwork, Music, and Social Studies.  If you know me, this is deeply, deeply ironic when you think of me now.  To explain, because of getting involved with Japanese Canadian history, I am known for my work in Social Studies, but my early teen self was pretty clueless and apathetic about Social Studies.  Though my teen self (and my present self) thought about or played music during almost every waking second of my existence, the trumpet was not my friend back then, so didn't do well in Band.  And with Woodwork class, I was unskilled, I could not follow a plan, and I was so slow that my projects were late or incomplete.  But now, you can find me in the garage cobbling something together with wood.  

I joke about my well-deserved C grade in woodworking because I enjoy it so much now as an adult.  Honestly, my skills have not really advanced that much, now in my garage workshop.  My projects are still wobbly, the paint and finish on them are non-existent or sloppy, and I am still glacially slow.  So why do I still do it?  I think of myself as a tinkerer, a designer, a scientist, and a problem solver.  Woodworking (woodplaying?) lets me explore all those sides of me.  The risers, lapdesks, and the students' storage bins (from the previous post) are examples of my wood tinkering.  

What do you need?

A while back, I was visiting a school where they were investigating self-regulation, and in one class a young teacher, Sarah, made her own storage crates and a big rolling table made out of a tree stump.  I was really impressed because I think she made all of her stuff in her apartment!  If you wanted to build some items for your class, this goes to show that you don't need a lot of tools or room.  

You basically need two things: 

1. Something to cut your wood to the length you want.
2. Something to fasten it back together in the shape you want it.  

For cutting, Sarah had the place where she bought the wood cut the wood for her.  I'm not that organized so I cut as I go, plus I am usually using leftover pieces of wood.  I use a miter saw to cut long skinny boards into short boards and a table saw or a circular saw with a guide for breaking down wide materials like plywood or reused Ikea cabinets.  For my first home projects (shoe shelves), I used a hand saw.

For fastening, I use nails, glue, screws, or a combination of the three depending on what I need the finished product to do or how it is going to hold up.  Because of my poor skills, I am not great at keeping things square, so one product that has really helped me lately is a pocket hole jig.  With it, things are usually square and they make relatively strong joints.  (There are lots of useful Youtube videos to explain how to use pockethole jigs).

[As an aside, one tool I would recommend is a cordless drill.  My whole woodworking rebirth came from the cordless drill.  It was the first tool I bought when my wife and I bought our house.  It was love at first use. I hung pictures with it. I assembled furniture with it. I reinforced mouldings with it. I drilled pilot holes with it.  Heck, I would have brushed my teeth with it if I could fit my toothbrush in the chuck.  I thought it was just me, but other friends who bought first houses and first drills felt the same.  Bonnie said excitedly, "Did you know there is a magnetic thing so the pointing things don't fall off?!"  Dave said, "Sometimes I  find myself walking around with it in my hand, just looking for things to drill."  Had I known that drilling was going to be this satisfying, I would have become a dentist.  Cordless drills are the gateway tool.]

Easy but useful projects

Here are some things I made that solved a few classroom problems.  (For both projects I used a pocket hole jig to make things square and strong, but you don't have to.)  

1. Classroom library book bins

For our classroom library, we arrange every book by genre and place the books in different bins based on those genres.  Students or teams of students adopt a genre bin and become the librarian for that bin, making sure books are returned to the proper bins.  

Some bins have lots of heavy books that would destroy the usual ugly plastic bins.  I had some nice dark wood bins that I bought at a liquidation place, but I did not have enough bins for every genre, so I had to make some sturdy bins using the pocket hole jig and (what else?) an unused Ikea shelf.  

bins with genre card and the librarian's name

2. Accessible teacher storage

The built-in teacher storage in my room is behind the sliding whiteboards and then there are swinging lockable doors.  I have this little rolling cart where my laptop and mic are, but the cart is around the corner from the teacher cabinets.  That means every time I wanted to grab a teacher book during a lesson, I'd have to walk around the cart, slide the whiteboards to the side, open the swinging doors, get the book, close the swinging doors, slide the whiteboards back, go back around to where the mic, camera, and laptop are, and then try to remember why I needed the book in the first place.  I needed a little bit of on-the-fly teacher storage.

There was this little corner (and I mean little, like less than 50 cm) where I could fit a shelf.  Because it was so skinny, I would need to go tall to get enough space for everything I needed there: read alouds, math materials, spelling resources, a place for my lunch, etc.  I left a little gap so there was room for my guitar and a place to hand my jacket.  

Like any of these teacher projects, by making it myself, I was able to create custom things that fit my needs (and constraints) perfectly.  

Wood Projects in the Classroom 1: Students' Storage during COVID

The Problem: Individual Storage

One of the many problems I had with COVID was storage.  Because we didn't know what was going to transfer the virus, I had students keep a minimum of supplies with them, but because some students were in desks and some were at tables, this meant that each student had to have individual, self-contained storage.  

At first, this was not a problem because I had enough white sliding bins so each student could have their pencil boxes, a duotang, a writing folder, a couple of notebooks, a whiteboard, and some individual supplies. Unfortunately, because these bins were flat, shallow, and horizontal, they easily overflowed or spill materials when students would try to dig out their whiteboards which they kept on the bottom.  Also, the white bins took up a lot of space, especially when students put them on the floor to give them more table space.  With the bins and scattered debris, it was like an obstacle course.

The Prototype

Using some materials I had left over from a kitchen remodel, I designed a prototype for a better bin.  These new bins were great because:

• they took up a third of the foot print of the white plastic ones.
• they were heavy on the bottom and slightly deep so they could be stood on end. Similarly, the students' materials could be stood on end so they were easy to find, instead of digging to the bottom.  
• they were rugged and could stand up to the day to day wear and tear. 
• the glossy white materials could be used as a dry-erase surface which students used to draw a picture or write a message to personalize their bins.
• they looked okay.
• they were cheap and easy to make.

I made a few prototypes and tried them out with a few students.  Like when I first introduced the risers, only trying them with a few students built a lot of cache with these new projects, and eventually every student was begging me for one.  

But I also was able to see how students used them and what I would change for the "production model".  One part I deleted was the hook for hanging the bin off the side of the desk or table.  I got the idea from this collapsible hook my mom would bring to restaurants so she would not have to place her purse on the floor.  "The Hook" was great in theory and allowed for more available space on the floor and on the work surface, but the test students kept knocking the hooks off the top or they would kick the bins unconsciously like a swinging pendulum.  Each time the bin would fall, their would be a big bang, so the hook got the hook.  

Production

When the design was finalized, some students helped assemble a few of the new bins.

Then every student went outside and sanded down their own bin to bond with their bin and to make sure there were no rough edges.  

Result

These new bins are vast improvement over what we were using them before.  They accomplished what they were meant for: creating accessible, safe, tidy storage.  They are so good, I can see using them post COVID.  Even if I don't, using re-purposed materials is better for the environment, (and freed up some space in my cramped garage).   Though I did the designing, I shared the process with the students, and it was good for them to see me work through the process of trying to solve the storage/obstacle course/safety problem, prototype, test, adjust, evaluate, and build.

Total cost: less than $10 for screws, glue, and sandpaper (for a set of 22).