Past projects 4
The Rainbow Connection
Funded Sep 26, 2012Thank you again for your contribution to our classroom and school community. The light boxes you donated to our classroom made a powerful impact on our light and vision unit.
Instead of simply reading about how color vision works, our students were able to create experiments to test the effects of colored light on our sight. Anticipation grew as students volunteered their time to cover our windows and doors with black paper to create totally dark experimental conditions. When it came time for our experiments, I was truly impressed with students' level of ownership, responsibility, and engagement with their inquiry projects. Having access to science equipment gave them an opportunity to demonstrate the precision and poise of scientists, an experience that was so powerful.
In addition to our color experiments, students had a series of reflection and refraction engineering challenges. In each challenge, a group of students needed to get light from its source to a final destination using mirrors or lenses (up to 7 at a time!). It was amazing to see the number of creative solutions that students came up with and the camaraderie that builds through this kind of group work.
Even more than adding to our students' experiences within this unit, you've helped build their excitement for the sciences and sense of themselves as scientists. Students were deeply moved by the donations as we tracked our progress towards our goal and the touching words you shared. It meant so much to all of us to know that our students were so well loved and supported by our community!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Ball
Fishy Circulatory Fun
Funded Oct 27, 2010Thank you again for your
generous support of our 7th grade math and science classes. Your contributions went directly into the
hands of our students and have allowed our circulatory system units to really
come to life in the past several months.
Our packages arrived with
absolutely everything necessary for the care and maintenance for our new fishy
friends. Students were excited and
curious about what was in store for our goldfish, most guessing that we would
be using them for dissection. They
were relieved to learn that the fish would survive our lab and took their roles
as goldfish technicians quite seriously.
In our lab, students were responsible for the care of their fish,
carefully wrapping them in moist cotton balls as they placed a drop of water
onto their gills every few seconds.
This allowed their team to observe blood flow through the capillaries of
their fish's tail. Although we had
studied the circulatory system for several weeks through textbook diagrams,
videos, and other labs, this particular activity was critical in dispelling
some common misconceptions.
Students came to understand that their blood does not simply slosh
around in their bodies, that it flows in one direction through a system of
blood vessels. It also gave them a
very concrete sense of the impact of pulse rate: groups were quick to rush
their fish to our urgent care tank if their blood flow slowed and their fish's
health appeared to be in danger. With
their conscientious care, all fish survived and will be available for future
classes.
Beyond our academic
goals, this gives our students a chance to experience science in a way that is
new for many of them: a chance to
imagine themselves as scientists.
Thank you again for your contributions to our classroom!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Ball
Human Body
Funded Oct 17, 2010Thank you again for your
generous support of our 7th grade math and science classes. Your contributions went directly into
the hands of our students and have allowed our human body units to really come
to life in the past several months.
Our first packages
arrived during an afternoon class on the structures and functions of
bones. Students were asked to
consider, for example the similarities and differences between the skulls of a
human, cat, horse, and alligator.
Though they were having productive discussions with their sets of
diagrams, the activity became so much richer with the addition of just a few
pieces of our new human skeletal model.
With a human skull model in hand my students, who are predominantly
English Language Learners, were better able to imagine the movements and
functions of the bones. This was
only the first few minutes of having these new resources in class and they have
continued to be an invaluable resource throughout our exploration of the
musculoskeletal system.
Dissection materials are
critical to a life sciences course and ours we did not have a fully operational
set before your donations. Now students
have pieced together the skeletons of rodents from our owl pellets, chicken
wings to manipulate individual muscles and joints, and are looking forward to
our mystery dissection for the spring – our fetal pigs! Dissections are more than just a fun
activity for students, they present an opportunity to use vocabulary in
context, like talking about how a muscle contracts as they pull on the bicep
and observe movements.
Beyond our academic
goals, this gives our students a chance to experience science in a way that is
new for many of them: a chance to imagine
themselves as scientists. Thank
you again for your contributions to our classroom!
”
With gratitude,
Ms. Ball
This classroom project was brought to life by KnowHow2GO and 39 other donors.But Where's the Spleen?
Funded Nov 29, 2009Your generous donations brought an ELMO document camera into our classroom and opened up incredible opportunities for our students – thank you! As you can see from our pictures, the document camera has been a useful tool for lessons in math and science, allowing students to take ownership of their own learning.
The document camera has been invaluable in supporting all students, but especially our English Language Learners and students with special needs. Students really get engaged when they can see how I model problem solving or note taking right on their same worksheet – or better yet, have students take charge of explaining their own work for others. This technology has opened up a whole new world of possibility in science with class demonstrations using the microscope or zoom features. We observed the entire mosquito life cycle from eggs to larvae to pupae, all with the power of the ELMO!
Thank you again for supporting our class and math/science education. This technology makes our content more accessible and engaging for all students! ”
With gratitude,
Ms. Ball
This classroom project was brought to life by Chevron and 2 other donors.