Past projects 6
Let's Make Phonics & Reading Fun
Funded Aug 11, 2023My students are so excited to use their new items in center groups. In small groups, we have a chance to each work at our own pace and at our own level. My having materials with different levels of difficulty, but with the same overall concept and look, students can be confident in their learning and not worry about what others are doing. This helps so much to keep groups that are working hard, but not competing with each other. Students can be challenged in their work no matter what learning level they are on.
These items are fun for students to do and they are shorter in length so that they can finish them in a short amount of time. This builds a sense of accomplishment and pride in knowing that they completed it all on their own. There are also items that are games and provide interaction with others to help and support each other in a kind manner. We all need to learn how to be good at something and also have something that challenges us without causing us to meltdown or wanting to quit. Students want to have fun while practicing the concepts that we are learning in our curriculum.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Maw
This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 5 other donors.Help Me Be My Best Self
Funded Feb 27, 2021Thank you so much for your generous donations. The students loved the fidgets to help them keep their hands busy while reading, listening, or testing. We sanitized them each night and then each student could choose one in the morning to use for the day. That way they all got to share yet keep safe in this year of COVID.
The social skills books were greatly helpful to generate discussions in the safe atmosphere of a character in a book. We were able to read and discuss situations that maybe were taking place in the lives of our students this year. They could ask questions, offer opinions, give suggestions, all while being anonymous.
These items will all be so helpful to students for many years to come. Thank you again for your help and support of our classroom.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Maw
Fun Phonics and Chapter Books
Funded Dec 3, 2019My class is loving the poetry and reader's theater sets for practice. These fun ways of reading allow many opportunities to repeat reading a passage without getting bored with it. For the reader's theater, we have been setting goals to make this appear like a television show. This means using all our skills that we are working on: fluent reading, inflection, pauses, following along so that aren't gaps in the script. Then we record our readings and watch and see how we did. They love it!!!
We are also starting to use the Word Study & Phonics tools are used to challenge ourselves to understand root words, prefixes, and suffixes as well as sound out new words with phonics patterns. This helps when we are reading the novels that we received to be able to sound out new words and decipher their meanings. We are using the novels in literature circles and have comprehension packets to help us to improve our reading and comprehension.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Maw
This classroom project was brought to life by An anonymous classroom supporter and 4 other donors.Beyond Basic Vocabulary
Funded Feb 28, 2019Thank you so much for your support. My class has loved having new books to read and in order to make the move into chapter books, we sometimes need help with vocabulary and sounding out words. The word ladders books are for different levels and challenge students to learn to listen to sound patterns and manipulate letters to create new words. This is a fun and challenging way to learn how to learn phonics patterns and new words. We have also used the phonics games to learn other ways to learn vowel patterns and apply this to creating new words.
We are so excited to use these new tools and learn and grow in our reading abilities.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Maw
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose.org Community and 6 other donors.Real Books for Real Kids
Funded Oct 25, 2018Thank you for your generous donations to my book project. My goal is to do novel studies in small groups with my students. Most of my second grade students began the year without the knowledge of how to read novels. They have been working hard and learning to enjoy a novel. It can be challenging to read a chapter book with no pictures. They have to learn how to visualize the words in their minds, how to create voices for characters, how to create settings, and how to keep this all in mind as they are reading. They also have to create reading stamina to keep going after just a chapter or two.
I am happy to say that most of my students are now enjoying reading chapter books. They had to be convinced that they would like it if they could stick with it and they are now getting the enjoyment and challenge of larger books. We are now going to read in small groups and have questions to understand the vocabulary, the story line, and the characters. This will help them to think about what they are reading and learn to be better writers as well.
Again, thank you so much. We are loving having books that are challenging, yet fun to read. They help us to learn new vocabulary and increase our comprehension skills.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Maw
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose.org Community and 6 other donors.Build, Learn, and Share Together
Funded Nov 1, 2017Your generosity has helped our classroom to incorporate project-based learning into our math curriculum. One of our first projects was to build a pyramid with Lego's. Since we were working on learning place value using addition, I assigned a value of 1, 10, or 100 to certain colors. After their pyramid was built, they got to add up the value of the colored blocks that were used. They loved it. We later built a sports stadium using Lego's and Knex. Again, they had a value assigned to certain colors so they could do some addition along with problem solving to create their stadium. They build projects in groups so there is a lot of problem-solving and collaboration skills being developed as well.
We use the wobble stools every day during rotations. Each student rotates through at least twice a day to use them. They allow movement for the students while not being distracting to others. They are very comfortable and I love sitting on them as well. It is very freeing to have some movement while you are working on assignments.
We love project days when we get to be creative and build using our new tools. Thank you so much for your support of our classroom and our endeavors to incorporate some fun and challenge into our learning process.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Maw