A Mother's Love for Reading Transcends into the Classroom
Alphabet Tiles combine Spanish, service learning, and makerspace

It started with the children's book, The Z was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg. Inspired by this book, which was a favorite of her children, Fenn Spanish teacher Gisela Hernandez Skayne developed a project for her ninth grade class. In his story, Van Allsburg, a three-time Caldecott winner and author of The Polar Express, transforms each letter of the alphabet using a word that begins with that letter. "'The A was in an Avalanche' and "the E was slowly Evaporating'" are examples of how the letters cast gloom in this "alphabet Theatre." Gisela read the story to her class, and then asked each boy to choose a letter and create a similarly inspired phrase in Spanish. Once the students creatively crafted their sentences, their plan was to combine the letters and make a book to present to the Lower School boys who to introduced them to Spanish. 

This plan was soon shifted as Pauline MacLellan and the makerspace entered into the project. Upon hearing of the alphabet book, Pauline suggested that in addition to a paper book, each ninth-grade boy could take his letter and the Spanish phrase that he had crafted and create a tile using the Carvey Machine in the makerspace. The relatively new tool is sold through Inventables, "the hardware store for designers." The machine can carve using a variety of materials including, "wood, plastic, soft metals, linoleum, foam, and molding wax." Gisela's class chose acrylic for their tiles and began the design work, which includes both text and a drawing, using the software Easel, also created by Inventables. Boys will take their hand-drawn letter art, upload it into the software, and then redraw it using the tools in the Easel program. 

Woven throughout the project, and to some extent at the core of the work, are the relationships between the ninth graders and the Lower School students because of the Big/Little Brother program at Fenn. Even though the students of Spanish in the ninth-graders began the work in their own classroom, they are excited to share Spanish with their little brothers. Kyle noted, "I started to think about a fourth-grader and what would make him laugh or get excited about Spanish. I thought that if I made the phrase funny and easy, the meaning would stick with him longer." 

The team of four students who are building the templates and design for the rest of their classmates are from the honors section of Grade 9 Spanish along with a student who excels in technology and project-based learning. Gisela will be guiding this Steering Committee through the project but knows that these four senior boys will lead their classmates through the work once others begin to set-up and design their tiles. Moreover, Gisela is looking forward to the presentation of the tiles to the Lower School students in May as she knows the power and influence of the relationships between the older and younger boys, and she believes that the positive creativity surrounding the project will make an impact on how younger students think about learning a language. 

Finally, when Michelle Heaton, the Service Learning Coordinator, heard about this interdisciplinary work, she began to think of ways that the class could connect with a local school that is in need of supplies and could therefore use the finished tiles as learning tools for their students. In the coming months, Michelle, Pauline, and Gisela will continue to work together, and will report back on the evolution of this project. In the meantime, Gisela is thrilled that they found a way for students to "use their knowledge of Spanish in such a creative way and also see that there can be intersections with technology and service learning as well."