Mindblogglingly Magnanimous and Majestically Mustachioed Men of Kiva

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Your generous donation has done wonders for my AVID students' critical thinking skills. They are a very visual bunch, so being able to have a surface to write out their thoughts and work through their points of confusion in tutorial has been amazing. We have tutorial twice a week and without your donation, we wouldn't have been able to get certified by the AVID program.

With your donation, these students have been able to increase their critical thinking skills in almost every subject. They are testing better and understanding more of the content on the first try. These white boards have made a huge impact for the learners, myself, and other teachers in other content classes. ”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Culver

I can't thank you enough for the wonderful materials that you so kindly donated. My students were so excited when they opened the box and saw what was inside. The listening activity set has helped my students practice and reinforce essential reading skills. My students like to use the Change a Sound flip books which are just what they needed to practice essential phonemic awareness and reading skills. It is gratifying to see my little kindergarteners reading and writing sentences.

You have truly made a difference in all of my students' learning. Again, thank you so much for making learning more enjoyable for my students. ”

With gratitude,

Mrs. F.

When I started this project, I wasn't exactly sure how much my students would enjoy reading current events from Weekly Reader and Time for Kids. Last Friday, I overheard one of my students excitedly exclaim to several other students, "Look! a new Weekly Reader just came!" They all gathered round to browse through the new magazines. They really look forward to every issue.

They not only enjoy them, but they are learning new vocabulary and becoming more fluent readers. They choose articles and then read them in cooperative groups. It's been amazing to see the improvement in their reading skills in these few short months. They are more confident and proud of their ability to read these challenging articles.

So I want to sincerely thank each of you for these gifts. They have truly made a difference to my students and to their growth as readers and as aware citizens. Your generous donations have made a difference in the lives of my students.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Kaplan

The experience was simply amazing! The educational challenge of building and creating enabled my young students to explore architectural designs and engineering concepts while discovering the joy of interactive play.

The indoor attractions at LEGOLAND Discovery Center provided continuous entertainment as well as opportunities for fun and adventure making it difficult for both the young and old to leave such an engaging learning environment. Thank you so much for providing us with the opportunity to take part in such a memorable educational experience!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Ward

I would like to thank each and every one of you for helping to make learning about other countries come alive for my students. By receiving the globe, I have been able to show my Pre-K students the location of the countries we are learning about in comparison to our own. With the globe we are also able to discuss as a class the different kinds of transportation we would take to get to the countries. The multicultural puzzles have also become a popular activity in our classroom. They really enjoy looking at the pictures on the puzzles and think it is the neatest thing how kids all over the world have families just like theirs. The language cards have become an exciting asset to our class as well. On the cards it explains how to greet someone in the specific language of the country we are learning about. The kids get excited when they learn a new word! These items have become a daily part of our classroom, and I really appreciate you helping to make this happen for us!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Wayman

Thank

you all for supporting my students. So far well over 100 students have used the

digital recorders to record their own stories and the stories of those that

inspire them. Their very first project designed to teach the mechanics of

how to use the equipment and how to use sound editing software to edit their

recorders was to narrate a short story that spoke to them and a central issue

in their life. Their stories were recorded and editing and uploaded to

our classroom blog. The stories were heard by fifth graders from our

feeder elementary schools. They were able to leave comments to my students.

Some of the comments were incredibly moving. One story in

particular received numerous comments from the fifth graders such as,

"Your story made me believe that I could succeed too", and "You

are so strong", and "You made me think of when I wanted to give up,

but then I did it".

This

led to our second project that involved students interviewing people who have

inspired them in some way. Students had stories of preachers,

grandparents, moms, and even a few teachers. In their reflections many

students talked about how it made them feel that they could go on to inspire

someone in their life someday.

Finally,

we are beginning an immigration project where students are going to tell the

stories of people who have immigrated to the US. Many of the immigrants

will be family members or close friends of the students and some of them will

likely be illegally in this country. We are hoping that students will be

able to use those stories to help inform their opinions about future

legislation regarding US immigration policy. These are the types of

projects that can change student lives and your contributions are helping to

make them possible. Many thanks for your generosity.”

With gratitude,

Mr. Friedle

The students and myself are so grateful to have our project funded. Due to your kindness, my students now have supplies that make Physical Education more engaging and motivating. With obesity being an American epidemic, I value the health of my students. Everyday they are already facing other challenges, which means exercise has low priority in their everyday routines. It's important that not only am I reaching out to my students academically, but socially and emotionally as well. With P.E. the students are able to not only get their heart-rate going, but also they are learning to play and work cooperatively in teams and pairs. Thanks to you something as simple as playing music outdoors, excites my class. They are enthused to learn new games to keep them moving, working together, and active.

The use of the cart has been a tremendous help to me with keeping P.E supplies together and organized in one spot. Before you would find hula hoops propped between tables to keep them up and stored away. Balls and jump ropes were places in cardboard boxes. With the new cart, it not only has helped me with classroom space, but transporting the materials out to PE has also been more efficient.

Your generosity and thoughtfulness means the world to us!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Tan

The variety of math activities that arrived in our classroom, infused a new excitement about California Standards that had already been introduced. The sorting activity that had gems for sorting, got them excited right away. Our class has a better understanding of the many ways information can be collected and presented on graphs and tally charts. The graphing activity center has them graphing cars every chance they get.

They are now both knowledgeable and experienced about math concepts. Thank you!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Farmer