Past projects 2
Empowering Calm, Creative and Collaborative Problem Solvers
Funded Sep 24, 2024I thank you for your donation to my project on behalf of my students. They were so very excited when the boxes starting arriving. Unboxing was like Christmas morning each time a new shipment arrived. The students were so delighted and amazed that strangers were gifting them all the items to be used in the classroom.
The fidgets have been well used in the calming corner and for individual students. Some students really need them to help them stay focused. Others use them to self-regulate and calm down when they feel frustrated or sad.
The games have been a wonderful addition to the classroom. The students are very motivated to stay organized, keep their desk clean and to finish assignments so they have more time to participate in Fun Friday. UNO, Perfection, Checkers and Chess have definitely been favorites! It is great to see the kids working together, taking turns and teaching others the rules of the game.
Also, STEM toys have been well-used. They really enjoy building with them. It is wonderful to see them collaborate to use their creativity and spatial skills to build all sorts of structures.
These items are ones that are not typically provided by schools, but are so needed. Thank you for providing them to my students.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Terry
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community & an Anonymous Partner and 2 other donors.Using Technology to Read
Funded Dec 16, 2016Thank you for your generosity! The funds you gave have provided technology to my students that would be not be accessible to them otherwise. The students received ipods and headphones with cases to protect them and a charging station to keep them going. Our school is in a high-poverty area and many students do not have this kind of technology available to them at home or school. I am able to load stories onto the ipods and students can use them to listen to their favorite books. Once students learned to use them, they listen to books independently while I work with small groups of students on specific skills.
This year I taught the second year of a K-1 loop. Some students use the ipods to access literature that is too difficult for them to read. Others use them to listen and follow along in their own book. For all students, they can hear the story read fluently with expression. This is important for many reasons. Some of my students are in homes where vocabulary is extensive and their parents read to them each day. For others, this is not the case. The more stories they can hear read fluently, the better. It helps to bridge the gap and allows students to gain valuable background knowledge. Next year, I teach kindergarten again and it will be wonderful to have a modern listening station available to the students.
It also allows students to practice their listening comprehension skills with a more complex story than the ones they may be reading independently. After listening to a story, students must complete a comprehension exit ticket to show understanding. It may be describing the main character or the setting, retelling the beginning, middle and end of the story, or identifying the central message of the story. We do this when I read a book aloud to the whole class, but having the ipods provides them more independent practice which is so needed. It really makes a difference!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Terry