Innovation Expo to Celebrate Creativity, Critical Thinking

The Bronxville School will host its annual spring Innovation Expo on May 21 as a way to celebrate creativity and innovation across the school community. Students, teachers, parents and community members are invited to explore design strategies, engage in creative play, offer feedback and imagine new possibilities by participating in a variety of workshops. 

“By modeling creative and critical thinking, engaging in collaborative prototyping, and sharing their expertise, participants will encourage each other to develop the skills and dispositions needed for innovation,” said teacher Denise Lutter, professional development coordinator and member of the committee that is organizing the event.

The family-school partnership event will begin with a K-12 visual arts showcase at 5 p.m., followed by a performance of the PUBLIQuartet that will include compositions written by members of the high school orchestra, and a variety of educational and engaging elementary school workshops from 5:30-6:30 p.m. The evening will continue with a keynote address by Dr. Nancy Sulla, founder and president of IDE Corp. (Innovative Designs for Education) at 6:30 p.m., an IDE workshop at 7 p.m. and a variety of middle and high school workshop sessions – led by students and educators – from 7-8 p.m. In addition, the district will host Kelly Kingman from Kingman, Inc. as a sketchnote artist during Dr. Sulla's presentation and a few other sessions.

One of the elementary school workshops will challenge participants to use their imagination and creativity to build an arcade game out of cardboard, while another workshop will encourage participants to build the tallest straw structure that can support a tennis ball above a table. In the Rock-n-Roller Coaster workshop, participants will use the principles of physics to create a rollercoaster from a variety of materials and test its capacity for speed. In other workshops, participants will learn how to code, create a Bronxville community mural, design innovative toothbrushes and learn how to make their own shadow puppets. 

One of the middle school workshops will explore physical computing with a micro controller and encourage participants to program LEDs and sound to create a music and light show. In other workshops, students will showcase their compound machines, which were designed as part of a physics unit, while others will debut their original short films, which were created as part of an assignment in their French classes. 

The evening will also feature an App Design workshop, which will allow high school Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles students to teach participants how to create and design their own basic applications. The Mindfulness and Meditation workshop will engage participants in a group meditation and share insight into the experience and role of mindfulness in the Bronxville School. In other workshops, high school students will teach participants how to edit photographs and create digital paintings, illustrations and animations. Students will also present a discussion on their investigation of the water quality of the Bronx River and the extensive historical research that supports National History Day.

The school staff and students are looking forward to the participation of Bronxville community members in the Expo.  To ensure appropriate supervision and sufficient supplies, reservations are required for the elementary school sessions and for students in grades 3, 4 and 5 only, by visiting https://tinyurl.com/bxvinnovates19. 

For more information on the Innovation Expo and workshops, click here.