Teacher Workshops
My goal in doing workshops for teachers is to share with other teachers what I’ve learned both about women inventors about and about the inventing process as it applies to students. Inventing calls for creative thinking and problem solving skills and other disciplines that span the curriculum which makes it an exciting classroom activity. While researching Kids Inventing! I talked to many teachers who teach invention units. In the lower grades, most teachers do it as a unit. In the upper grades, some teachers share the task with their colleagues—in one class students would brainstorm ideas, in another they’d describe their idea, in another they’d build their model. On the basis of my research and what I’ve learned from other teachers I have designed two workshops. I’ve also prepared student worksheets that accompany Women Invent! and Kids Inventing! which you can download.
Invention as an Interdisciplinary Activity
In this interactive workshop, we go over ideas and ways of prompting students to come up with ideas for inventions, and review ready-to-use handouts that students can use to come up with ideas for inventions, name them, keep an inventor’s log, sketch and build a model of their idea, create an ad campaign and find out about manufacturing and selling an invention. We’ll learn how to read a patent, do a patent search, name a few inventions and plan an ad campaign for others. We’ll review a list of national invention programs and competitions that students can enter then watch a film of kids at an inventors fair and evaluate the presented inventions as if we were judges of an invention fair.
America’s Women Inventors
In this workshop, we’ll compare the lives of five women inventors: Martha Coston, inventor of signal flares used during the Civil War; Madam Walker, the first African American female millionaire; Patsy Sherman, co-inventor of Scotchgard; Bette Graham, creator of Liquid Paper; and, Sally Fox, developer of naturally colored cotton. I’ll present a slide show and tell stories of dozens of America’s women inventors and present ways to incorporate their stories into the curriculum..
Past Appearances:
Edufest, 2007
California Teachers of English Annual Conference, 2005
California Reading Association Annual Conference, 2002, 2003, 2005
Montana Educators Conference, 2001