Mrs. Bermingham's Classroom Edit display name

Past projects 7

• Coding and Learning with Dash and Dot

  Funded Oct 23, 2019

  Please excuse the late date of this thank you! The school year kind of got away from me - and everyone else! - at the end there. Unfortunately, because we went to distance learning in mid-March, not all of my students have had a chance to use our new Dash robots yet. We were supposed to break them out for the last month of school. :-( However, some of my second and third graders did get a start with them and they worked hard to code Dash to follow a certain path. One group was doing so well with that that they had a chance to start using the ball launcher as well. It was so fun to watch and listen to them laugh and groan and cheer with every attempt - and without even realizing it, they were working on skills like planning, problem solving, and teamwork. I especially enjoyed watching a few kids who struggle with more traditional academic work really step up and shine minus the barriers of reading and writing struggles.

  Before distance learning ended, I had all of my students fill out a feedback form, giving them the opportunity to tell me both what they loved about science and enrichment this year and what they wish had been different. The robots came up more than almost everything else. Either they were thrilled and wanted to do more or they were disappointed that they missed out this year. Thankfully, we'll be able to enjoy them for many years to come.

  If you requested personal thank you notes, please forgive me for not getting them out to you! I was planning on having students write them after they'd all had a chance to be hands on and that plan went awry because of the distance learning. Working around a pandemic definitely wasn't in the plans! Please know that we all appreciate you and your gift so much! As always, it means so much to me to have so many wonderful supporters in our corner.”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham

• Standing Up for Learning

  Funded Aug 15, 2018

  Oh, my gosh, I owe you so many apologies for the late date of this note! The year just got completely away from me, and then my husband and I started working on relocating to the Western New York area, and it just feels like things have been crazy ever since!

  But enough about me! We got so much use out of our standing desks and lap desks! The kids were so excited when they came in and saw them ready to go and were really eager to use them. They really helped all of us, but a few in particular, work more comfortably and gave us the freedom to move and wiggle a bit while still working hard and not being disruptive to others. In fact, they were so popular, that one of the other special education teachers in our building ended up getting some for her classroom too!

  As I hinted at above, I'm at a new school in a new city this year, but all the items you helped us purchase are still being used in Cortland. A couple of the standing desks moved up to the grade 5/6 building with the students featured in the photos, and a couple stayed in the classroom for incoming students to use. The lap desks are also still being used by students in the district. Thank you so much for your contributions to our learning! We are so grateful!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham

• Fun With Numbers

  Funded Mar 27, 2018

  Thank you again for your generous support of our classroom. As you can see in the first photo here, we were so excited when we opened the boxes from Donors Choose. We wanted to play every game right away! It was so hard to even know where to begin.

  Thanks to you we were able to practice place value, number sense, addition and subtraction, and critical thinking skills in ways that were new and fun and never, ever boring. We used the games during math rotations at least once a week, on game day Fridays, and sometimes even chose to play them during our free time. Some of our friends in other classrooms played them too!

  We'll all be back together in September and we'll continue to use these games to keep previous skills sharp while also practicing some new skills and concepts with games we haven't even played yet!

  It means a lot to us that you care about our learning so much! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham

  This classroom project was brought to life by Ripple and 6 other donors.

• Books! Books, Books, Books!

  Funded Mar 30, 2017

  Please forgive me for the long overdue thank you! Your box of books was met with a chorus of excited, "New books! WOOOOO!" We dumped them on the table and dove in, everyone in search of just the right book. These books - at an appropriate reading level for us while still being high interest - have been such a hit! The audiobooks were especially exciting since prior to this, we didn't have a listening library. Now we have a new CD player and books to listen to as well as read. Listening to reading really helps us hear what good reading sounds like which helps us become better readers. I know we'll be enjoying these books in our room for years to come. Thanks for supporting us!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham

  This classroom project was brought to life by Aspect Ventures and 10 other donors.

• Making Learning Magic

  Funded Dec 23, 2016

  Thank you so much for helping us purchase our Osmo kits! They've been really beneficial for all the various grade levels and achievement levels I work with and many of my students cheer when they come in and see the iPads and Osmos set up.

  As I've mentioned before, sometimes our work can feel a bit repetitive and monotonous, but injecting some technology, especially technology that also involves some hands-on manipulatives, always perks everyone right up. So far we've used the Osmo to practice spelling words and sight words, to work on science and social studies vocabulary, to practice counting, adding, subtracting, and multiplying, and to study shapes.

  One of my first graders, in particular, has really taken to using the Osmo for math practice. Honestly, I think he completely forgets that he's even doing math because he's so engaged in popping bubbles and collecting fish, both a part of the Numbers game. When I helped him make the connection between the skills involved in a math assignment he was working on and the skills involved in playing with the Osmo, he was gobsmacked to realize that yes, he did know how to do it! Making learning fun and engaging in that way is priceless. Thank you so much for helping me do it!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham

• Getting Plugged In: Headphones For The Classroom

  Funded Feb 16, 2016

  Dear Friends,

  I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get around to writing this letter. It was a crazy end of the year in Syracuse with trips to Space Camp and conferences for me and tests, projects, and some fun for the kids.

  I wanted to thank you for your generation donation, helping us toward the purchase of our headphones. During the last half of the year, we started doing a lot of centers. Centers provided me with an opportunity to do hands-on work with smaller groups of students among other things. While I was working with a group, a group was often doing some kind of independent work. Some days that was doing research, some days it was watching and answering questions from EdPuzzle videos, some days it was studying and drawing diagrams. We even played around with students watching and listening to lessons that I'd previously recorded. In the last few weeks, students also began recording themselves drawing and explaining concepts and making oral reports. None of this would have been possible without our headphones. Because of the number of students in the room and the size of the room, it would have been impossible for 6-10 students to be watching or listening to videos, podcasts, and lessons with any kind of focus without headphones. And students' recordings would have picked up every other sound in the room at the same volume as the student without the microphones on our headphones. There are so many things that can be done with these and our technology, and I know I'm just scraping the tip of the iceberg. I look forward to finding new ways to put these tools to use next year.

  Thank you again for helping me and my students. We all appreciate you! Have a great summer! :)”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham

• iPads for Hands-On STEM Learning

  Funded Oct 29, 2015

  I cannot thank you enough for the iPads we were able to buy through your generous donations. We've experimented with using them in a lot of different ways and we're all enjoying them so much! As I said in my original proposal, my students live in a high poverty area and many of them don't have access to the Internet or technology outside of school. Being able to capitalize on their natural interest in all things technological has increased interest and participation. Every day students come into the room and ask me, "Mrs. Bermingham, are we going to use the iPads today?" When the answer is yes, they pump their fists, say, "Yes!" and yell to everyone else coming in the room, "Guys, we're using the iPads today!"

  Academically, the iPads have been awesome. A lot of the things in our curriculum are things that happen over thousands of years or far away from Earth, and that can be hard to grasp for 11-year-old brains. (Heck, some of it is hard for me to wrap my brain around at times!) We've used the iPads to play with interactive simulations of the water cycle, study the night sky, and watch videos from the International Space Station. In our next couple of units, the iPads will provide opportunities for students to manipulate weather systems, visualize the rock cycle, and see the long-term effects of things like pollution and climate change on our planet. I'm also hoping to find an appropriate virtual field trip for us to experience. A couple of students have made comments like, "Whoa, space is so big! I never knew HOW BIG before!" This technology is allowing them to see and understand things beyond their little corner of the world. Considering how limited their experiences often are compared to other kids their age, this is such a gift.

  These iPads have been quite a gift for me too. One of the most challenging things about being a teacher is balancing everyone's different academic and behavioral needs. In every class, I have students who are working below grade level, at grade level, and some above grade level. I have students who can work very well independently, some who need a little push here and there, and some who need pretty consistent attention for both academic and behavior reasons. In the past, if I had to stop and address behavior, everyone else's learning came to a stop. If I had to stop and give students more academic support, students who had already grasped the content were stuck waiting for us. The iPads have helped make learning a more individual, personalized experience. If I need to redirect behavior or spend more time with certain students, other students can continue working. Technology also makes it easier for me to differentiate for students' needs. In one of the pictures I posted, there are 3 girls working independently. They're all working on the same content, but at different reading levels. One of them has an additional enrichment activity to work on. One of them also has a Spanish-English dictionary open to help with some translations. The most exciting thing is that I know I've only barely started to understand the different ways I can use these iPads to personalize learning.

  Finally, one of the benefits that I didn't even anticipate is how wonderful the immediate access to technology has been to my English Language Learners. One of the groups I teach is a Beginners English class. Any 6th graders at our school who have been speaking English for a year or less go into this group and most of them are new to the United States. As you can imagine, it can be very challenging at times. I can speak a tiny bit of Spanish, but this group also contains students who speak Karen, Somali, and Swahili. While the goal for the year is for them to hear as much English as possible, ideally they pick up at least a little bit of content as well. Things like Google Translate have made it much easier for me to make sure they understand the directions that have been given and some of the science content we're talking about. Beyond academics, it's helped socially. During free time last week, an English-speaking student and a Somali-speaking student had a conversation via Google Translate. It was so wonderful seeing these two students find a way to connect and communicate despite their language barrier. When other students realized what was happening, they wanted to join in, too. I've learned this year that it's pretty typical for beginning English speakers to spend a year not doing much talking, and I know this kind of connection will go a long way toward making the English Learners feel more comfortable. This wouldn't have happened without your generosity.

  So in closing, thank you, thank you, thank you! We're already enjoying and using the iPads so much and that will only continue. You've made a difference not just for these students, but for all my future students as well.”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Bermingham