Past projects 11
Ditch the Markers!
Funded Oct 24, 2024Thank you so much for your generosity. Your donations have made a positive impact on the learning in my classroom.
I teach middle school math, including two classes for students who need extra support but are not on IEPs. They have not yet mastered their times tables or fraction operations, so we are working on building up these skills so they are able to succeed in their grade-level math classes. It is imperative to keep them engaged with numerous short activities and practices, which often involves lots of paper copies or lots of whiteboard markers that quickly run dry.
Your gift of whiteboard crayons and reusable sleeves is making it easier for this crucial math practice to occur. My students love using the twisty, pretty-colored crayons, and erasing mistakes is easy. They are engaged and learning!
Thank you!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
First Steps Towards Robotics
Funded Dec 3, 2019In our classroom for Talented and Gifted students, we usually spend some time each week working on learning the basics of computer coding. We start with game-based learning, using code.org and LightBot so students learn how to use blocks to move a character around a screen, teaching them the basic logical structure of programming (especially the idea that the bot does exactly what you tell it to do, not necessarily what you want it to do!). In the upper grades, we expand into using Scratch, which is still block-based but allows for much more creativity and complexity in creating animated stories and games.
By sixth grade, we have some students who are fluent in block coding like this and are ready to take the next step. A few others have started to lose interest. When we brought out the microbits that were purchased with this money, the whole room lit up with new interest. Having a physical representation of what they were doing instead of only a digital one was thrilling! In addition, while the coding for the microbits can be done using block code similar to what we've been learning, the site also "translates" everything into JavaScript, which is a gentle introduction to more complex work.
Thank you for your support in funding this project.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
This classroom project was brought to life by An anonymous classroom supporter and 5 other donors.Survival on Mars!
Funded Sep 24, 2018Thank you so much for your generosity in helping to fund this project!
The main part of this project was to purchase a class set of the student edition of The Martian. We are going to read this with our sixth-grade classes this spring, and use it as a basis for a series of engineering challenges. My students are excited that our literature studies will involve science!
Right now, the piece of the project that is getting the most use is exploring the Snap Circuits with the alternative energy pieces. The kids are intent on following the schematics to make the different projects, and are enjoying doing things like hand-cranking to charge batteries!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
Dig Then Draw
Funded May 23, 2018Thank you so much for your contributions! The materials we were able to purchase have definitely made a positive impact on my classroom.
The soil testing kit and soil sampler have expanded our environmental curriculum and tie in nicely to our studies of chemistry this year. We are on a large campus that has a pond area and an irrigation canal, and we have tested water quality here in the past. Adding in soil chemistry has made it so more students in our groups can directly participate in the gathering of data about our environment. The soil columns we've collected have given students a sense of the complexity of the nature around us.
Finally, being able to link this to art has increased student interest. The oil pastels are beautiful, and you can see some of the student work in the pictures I've uploaded. Students were able to combine their observations with some abstract art techniques, and the results were lovely!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
This classroom project was brought to life by An Anonymous Arts Funder and 9 other donors.Sit Down, Wiggle Around, and Learn
Funded Jan 9, 2018These stools are great!
When my students walked into my room the day after I received them, they instantly gravitated towards them and began asking who got to sit on them first. Not surprisingly, the wobble stools are the most popular, and we've had to set up a rotating list to make sure that each student who wants to gets a chance to sit on them. It's interesting how some students absolutely love them and others clearly prefer a regular chair - this is giving my students clear choices about how they like to sit as they are learning. The regular stools are in constant use, as some students prefer to sit in those all day rather than a chair, and they are so light and stackable that they make it easy to flex seating when we are doing a presentation at the front of the room.
Thank you again for your donations. This has made my classroom a better place!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
This classroom project was brought to life by The Clorox Company and 5 other donors.Watercolors and Erosion
Funded Oct 12, 2017Thank you so much for your contribution to my classroom.
We set up the stream table in a corner of my room, and as soon as students walked in that first morning they instantly gravitated toward it. I teach many different grades as a pull-out program from their regular classes, but it did not matter if it was an eager third grader or a trying-to-be-cool sixth grader - they were all willing and happy to stick their hands in the water and sand and start experimenting with the flow of water. Each group worked together to build dams out of gravel, to fill lakes, to carve stream beds through the sand. This hands-on work is enhancing our study of geological processes this year.
This project was written to connect art with the sciences, and the watercolors you helped us buy are fabulous for that. They are high-quality liquid watercolors in amazingly vibrant colors, and the students oohed and aahed when they experienced how rich pigments flow on the paper when using a wet-on-wet painting technique - it made a much bigger impression than using ancient, dried out economy supplies!
I appreciate your generosity. Your gift has enhanced my students' lives by impacting their science and art education in an incredibly positive way.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
This classroom project was brought to life by An Anonymous Donor and 6 other donors.Organization = Success!
Funded Jan 24, 2016Thank you so much for your generous donations to my classroom. The binders arrived yesterday evening. I hadn't told my class that I had written the grant, and when I showed them these beautiful, giant binders they were genuinely excited (well, most of them seemed excited; there were a couple who were trying to hide it). One of my students had been getting by with a duct-taped 2-inch binder with a broken ring that barely contained his materials for his morning classes: his eyes lit up when I told him that he could have one of these new ones. The students who are getting these genuinely appreciate your help!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
This classroom project was brought to life by American InterContinental University and 6 other donors.Thinking Spaces
Funded Mar 22, 2014Thank you for your generous contributions.
If you don't remember, you donated money to my classroom so we could buy study carrels. As you can see from the photos, these are high-quality. They compact down nicely for storage and are made out of sturdy plastic that will be very difficult to break. They do not fall over, but instantly perch upon the tables with a minimum of fuss.
We have already used them three days in the past two weeks. When my large classes have tests, we can transform my classroom from a dynamic small group discussion environment to quiet individual testing areas. I also had a student the other day who was having a bad day and wanted to work by themselves: the study carrel allowed them to have some privacy and concentrate as they worked, while the students around them were still able to collaborate.
Thank you for your help,”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
This classroom project was brought to life by Disney and 11 other donors.Quantum Physics in Junior High
Funded Mar 26, 2013I would like to thank you again for your generous gifts.
The Brief History of Time arrived at our school about three weeks ago. My students did not know that I had requested these books, and when I lifted the first one out of the box one of my students literally squealed in excitement. They leapt out of their seats, every single one of them eager to get a copy. It was amazing to observe such a desire to learn more about our universe.
What is even more amazing is what has been going on the past couple of weeks. Students are reading the book on their own time as extra homework for this class, and on Fridays we are discussing it in small groups. The students are leading their own discussions, not only "staying on task" but asking each other deep, thought-provoking questions. They have even set up their own schedule to hold each other accountable for which chapters to discuss each week!
One of the parents came to our school to personally thank me for giving her child the opportunity to read this text and said how he was so excited to be truly challenged by schoolwork. I let her know that it was the generosity of strangers that is allowing us to have this experience.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill
Algebra in Real Life
Funded Apr 18, 2012I would like to thank you for your generous donations to my classroom.
Your money made it possible for my class to get stopwatches and digital scales. We have used them for two projects so far. My Algebra classes collected data on how long it took them to walk various distances, and we graphed this data to see if the relationship between distance and time was linear (which lead to a great discussion of the use of formulas vs. real-life data). My statistics class used them to gather data about how long they could do various physical activities, like hold their breath or stand on one foot, and analyzed their results to find the correlation coefficient for each pair of activities. For both of these activities, the use of their own data inspired them to work much harder on the underlying mathematics than they would have if I had just provided them a list of numbers.
We will continue to use these materials in my class for years to come. Thank you for helping to make math relevant to junior high students!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hill