Past projects 3
Basic Supplies for a Strong Second Half!
Funded Feb 13, 2015To all of our friends and family who donated and sent us gift cards- thank you so much!
Thanks to you, we have had an awesome second half of the school year. Our classroom library books still look beautiful and new, thanks to the Ziploc bags you helped give us. We have been able to photocopy poems during our poetry unit, short stories during our fiction unit, and give our students copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution during our government unit all due to our new shipment of paper.
We just finished a unit on current events. We were able to provide our students with newspaper articles about Ferguson, Baltimore and the relationship between civilians and police. We have sparked their curiosity and caused them to question. As teachers, this is the ultimate reward!
We are currently reading A Monster Calls, an incredible young adult novel by Patrick Ness. We are able to send excerpts from the book home with our kids thanks to you. Furthermore, as we read, we are able to "stop and jot" and "stop and draw", using our amazing new mini whiteboards, dry erase markers and erasers. Our kids were so excited to have the opportunity to write...with these new tools it didn't really seem like work!
You have truly enriched our experience as teachers and our students' experiences as learners in our classroom. We were able to do so much more with our kids because of your donations. We have seen our students blossom into stronger readers and writers, with over 85% of our students jumping 2 or more levels in reading this year. We could not have done this without you.
Our deepest thanks,
Claire and Dan”
With gratitude,
Ms. Steines
Resources for Awesome 7th Graders!
Funded Aug 16, 2014Our classroom has become so bright and beautiful thanks to all of you! Colorful student-created charts cover the walls, informational posters on Native American tribes are plastered on every free inch of wall space, and our color-coded baskets are filled with brand new books! Our classroom looks and feels like a pretty great place to learn.
Since receiving your donations, our 7th graders have competed in fierce jeopardy tournaments using their mini whiteboards to answer questions about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Students have used their clipboards to work in pairs out in the hallway to analyze primary and secondary sources related to Christopher Columbus, and then argue whether he is a villain or hero. We have watched historical documentaries from National Geographic and the History Channel to make the history we study come alive. Students have learned about the Age of Exploration and the migration of the Paleo-Indians by reading historical fiction and non-fiction articles from the paper you supplied. After learning about the Black Death during the Middle Ages, our students were fascinated to read the latest issue of Junior Scholastic, which featured an article on the spread of Ebola. Amazing text-to-world connections came from these resources. When we read A Monster Calls, a beautiful novel about a boy whose mother has cancer, we have paired texts from Scholastic Scope to teach our kids about what happens in your body when you receive chemotherapy.
Loose-leaf paper to complete homework assignments, folders to keep their work organized, and Sharpie markers to label everything, have helped our kids become more responsible, on task and self-aware learners. Thank you for providing us with useful, tangible tools to make learning come alive inside of our classroom! Our students were so touched by your generosity and so thankful to have brand new, wonderful supplies to enhance our learning this year.
We are so grateful for your support. As public school teachers, we really struggle for the right resources and materials to motivate our students to succeed. You are now officially part of the fight to provide equal access to a quality education for ALL students, regardless of socioeconomic status. Our deepest, heartful thanks to all of you.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Steines
Amazing Supplies for the New School Year!
Funded Sep 7, 2011I can't even begin to tell you how happy it made me to see my students' faces the morning they walked into school and their new supplies were set up and waiting for them. An assignment book for every student, a big classroom calendar that we use every single day, a pencil sharpener for all of our art supplies, tons of possibilities to build phonemic awareness with our new letter-sound kit, organizational materials for each student's individual binder to display their academic goals, velcro to hang up the amazing work they have been doing...your generosity has truly made my classroom a brighter and better place.
Thank you all so much for making a difference, and for giving me such a beautiful example to share with my students about what caring for others truly means. ”
With gratitude,
Ms. Steines