Past projects 8
Thrive Toolkit: Empowering Academic, Social, and Emotional Growth
Funded Oct 15, 2024Thank you so much for your generous donation! The students will be so excited to try out all of our new fidgets, have conversations with each other and just have fun playing and exploring while learning! Your kindness and generosity is truly appreciated! We can't wait to get our toolkits started!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
This classroom project was brought to life by Hawai'i State Dept. of Ed and Marc & Lynne Benioff.We Are Readers!
Funded Feb 16, 2024Thank you so much for your generous donations! We have been so excited to start this series and now we will have the whole set at our disposal! The students will be so excited to comfortably sit around the room to read their books at their skill level or listen to our read aloud and participate in discussions about what we read.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
This classroom project was brought to life by Hawai'i State Department of Education.Every Child Is a Natural Born Writer
Funded Mar 4, 2023Thank you so much for all of generous donations and support in helping me nurture and develop my students writing skills. The students love having a choice in how they participate in lessons. They love having various manipulatives that allow them to practice the patterns we are learning in a fun and engaging way. Being able to bind their stories after publishing makes them feel like real writers. The Author's Chair makes students feel special and like their voice is being heard. It is thanks to you that I am able to make learning fun for my students.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
Building a Thinking Classroom
Funded Nov 17, 2023Thank you so much for the materials to foster our thinking learning environment! The students were so excited to come into the classroom and see our new set up. We have used our new whiteboards, markers and erasers to work in groups during various subjects. In Language Arts we work together to organize our ideas when comparing and contrasting different texts, label our mentor sentences with the parts of speech, and generate as many words as we know that contain our targeted affix. In math we use our boards to work out challenging problems together by drawing our our model to represent our thinking and then share our boards and strategies with other group members.
Our new materials have encouraged applied thinking, problem-solving and collaborative decision making. Students have been inspired to engage in thinking and learning through doing.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
This classroom project was brought to life by Hawai'i State Department of Education.Making Learning Fun
Funded Oct 30, 2022Thank you so much for all of generous donations and support in making learning fun for not only my students this year but for each year after. The students love having a choice in how they participate in lessons. They love having books that allow them to practice the patterns we are learning while also laughing and enjoying the story together. Having various materials for art projects to show what they have learned gives the students a different way of participating in the curriculum that is fun and engaging. It is thanks to you that I am able to make learning fun for my students.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
This classroom project was brought to life by Hawai'i State Department of Education.Learning in Comfort
Funded Mar 6, 2022Thank you so much for all of our materials to help us learn in various ways in comfort. The students were so excited to see our new equipment. Having different seating and workspace options has made learning more engaging and excited which is definitely needed in the last quarter of school. The students are currently using the yoga mats to read their books outside under the tree in order to reach their reading goals. The trays have allowed students to practice for our state test while stretching out their legs on the floor. Our stools have helped students be more focused during our small group lessons by allowing them to quietly move their bodies while listening.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
Back to School Basics
Funded Aug 6, 2021Thank you so much for your very generous donation to fund our project. Using a quality projector and speakers to project lessons, videos, and examples allows all students to see visual representations of what we are learning as well as be given the opportunity to see and learn about new things and places. Having dry erase boards and erasers right on their desks makes it easy for students to readily show their thinking and work out problems. This allows them to actively engage in discussions to help teach and learn from each other. Having recess equipment gives students the opportunity to play various games and get some exercise.
Having tools that enhance our learning and make it more fun and exciting is what the students have been enjoying the most. Coming back from a challenging year of learning virtually at home, in which many students just had the basic necessities to access their lessons, to a year filled with many new tools to enrich their lessons has been the most exciting. Thank you so much again!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood
This classroom project was brought to life by Hawai'i State Department of Education.Listening Center
Funded Apr 8, 2014Thank you so much for your very generous donation. Your kindness was greatly appreciated and will never be forgotten. I was fortunate enough to have received my items a few weeks prior to the end of last school year so I have been able to see the impact these items have had on my last year's students and this year's students. Both groups of students have expressed great excitement in being able to listen to books on cd with each other. This excitement has helped to foster a greater love for reading especially for my struggling and reluctant readers.
They have also really enjoyed being able to work in small groups at our new table. Sitting at the table provides them with an area of less distractions and the freedom to take risk in responding to questions without the pressure of being judge by their classmates. This has in turn really begun to boost their confidence. As you will see in my attached photos having a listening center has enabled me to expand the literacy stations that I use resulting in an increase in student engagement. The students will work through different stations where they will have a chance to practice the skills and strategies we are working on independently while I am able to work one-on-one students or with small groups. This allows me to pin point areas of need for each student and work with them to strengthen those weaknesses.
All of this has led to an increase in student achievement. All students last year were able to show growth in their reading scores. Although it is too early in the school year to see growth in reading scores I have already noticed a slight increase in reading fluency from my struggling readers. This is a direct result of being able to work one-on-one with the teacher, hearing examples of fluent reading, and most of all gaining more confidence in themselves as a reader. All of this has been made possible by you! Words cannot thank you enough!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Underwood