young inventors Can a pencil sharpener be improved? Holley second-grader Shannon Kelly thinks so. She and her classmates created a pencil sharpener that's both quiet and mess-free by putting a piece of sandpaper in a small box. That's just one of the inventions the students in Chris Langelotti's class created during a special unit on inventors they just completed. Student teacher Carrie Schutz, a student at SUNY Brockport who has been working with the class since the first day of school, said she designed the unit around the students because she knows how creative they are. The unit began with the students researching inventors and why they invent. They also listened to stories about inventors during reading time and drew illustrations in a booklet while they listened. Next, students were divided into groups and each group made their own invention. The invention could be something new or something that already existed made better, like the pencil sharpener, and had to be something that would make their lives easier. Students even created trade-marks for companies that would manufacture their inventions and wrote commercials with jingles to advertise them. Once their projects were complete, the students had to present them in front of an audience that included not only their fellow classmates, but family members as well. After their presentation, their teacher surprised them with "patents" for their inventions. |
