Past projects 3
Let's Engineer with Roller Coasters!
Funded Mar 27, 20185th graders waited patiently for weeks when I told them we were receiving the roller coasters. Every day they'd come into class asking if the roller coasters arrived yet. When they did show up they were filled with excitement and anticipation. We began building right away in collaborative groups.
Students learned about the value of teamwork while making their roller coasters. They quickly realized the importance of reading instructions and organizing materials before building. They worked cooperatively and shared ideas. Some groups built more quickly than others, and many students offered their expertise to help other groups.
Once the roller coasters were built they practiced testing them and recording the results. They made adjustments to height and slope to see how that impacted their time and speed. They revised their roller coasters to see whose was the fastest, the tallest and the longest. It was an amazing experience for all involved and we could not have done it without the support of our gracious donors.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lahti
This classroom project was brought to life by Ripple and 2 other donors.Give Students Real World Math to Solve!
Funded Nov 18, 2016We are thrilled to be using Scholastic Dyna Math magazines in our fifth grade classroom. We often use them as a warm-up because the short articles pertain to our daily lesson and the math in the magazines are great starter questions to our content. Students work together to partner read and solve the math questions, providing a lot of opportunities for collaboration and problem solving. A favorite activity of ours is to read the articles and write our thoughts, connections or questions on sticky notes. Next we put our sticky notes on the white board so we can see all the reading strategies we used. This activity allows us to work together by doing math and increasing our reading comprehension.
When students first received the magazines they dived right into the colorful articles that related to math as well as activities that they see in their everyday life. The first article we read compared Pokemon to fractions, and it was fascinating to watch students make connections. As they paged through the magazines they found articles that related to previous math lessons and we were able to have many discussions on how math is in the real world!
Our next steps are to continue reading these high interest Dyna Math magazines by working on problem solving strategies and increasing our reading comprehension. Your donation to our project made all of this possible, helping to increase student's achievement in our classroom.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lahti
Bringing Literacy into a Science Classroom
Funded Nov 20, 2015Our 5th grade class is thrilled to have a subscription to Super Science magazine from Scholastic through your supportive donations. When we received our first issue students were excited to read the informative articles and look through the colorful photos the magazine had to offer. They were equally fascinated by the app that went along with the magazine because they were able to view videos and play games that interacted with the articles. The March issue was the students favorite so far because of an article titled, Go Fly a Kite! Students were able to read the article, practice making the kite online, and even some were inspired to try to make a kite of their very own.
What was most important to our classroom was the link between reading and writing. Students read high interest articles and practiced writing strategies, like talking to the text, by writing their thoughts and connections on sticky notes. Students were also given the opportunity to choose what articles they wanted to read as well as be involved in metacognitive conversation about the articles with other students. This allowed for more understanding and comprehension of the articles they read. Students look forward to receiving the magazines bimonthly and we will continue exploring both the magazine and app within our classroom.
We are anxiously awaiting spring because some of the articles have motivated students to explore the world around them. The article about the kite got them thinking about gravity and students are starting to design their own science experiments where they can test their hypothesis. The March issue also discussed how to write a hypothesis, so they are planning their own experiments based off of the material they read! The November issue had an article about a paper bridge, and students want to design their own version using their own materials and ideas from the article. It has been exciting to see students read about science and want to learn more! We are so grateful your donations to our classroom has given us this opportunity to read, write and create.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lahti