Mrs. Spicher's Classroom Edit display name

Current requests

Past projects 6

• Mental Health Matters

  Funded Oct 4, 2024

  Thank you again for providing the material for my project, "Mental Health Matters!" My students are enjoying the materials you provided for my project. When I first received the package of materials, I surprised my students with an inspirational sticker in each of their lockers. They were surprised to see the stickers the following morning and were talking excitedly to each other about finding the stickers. I have continued to hand out the stickers to students who seem sad, need a pick-me-up, or have worked hard in class.

  I have used the birthday pencils and bracelets as a small gift for each student on their birthdays. The students appreciate being recognized by their teacher on their birthdays.

  The students' favorite material provided by the project are the Boogie Boards. The students enjoy using the Boogie Boards, rather than plain lined paper, when solving math problems. The Boogie Boards are terrific because I no longer need dry erase markers or erasers. The students use a stylus and at the press of a button, everything they have written is erased. This non-traditional "paper" gets the students excited to show their work.”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Spicher

  This classroom project was brought to life by .

• Calculating in Math

  Funded Feb 8, 2023

  Middle school math really start transitioning away from concrete math, such as basic calculations -- 6 x 7 = 42. It still requires calculation, but in topics like geometry, the focus is no longer on the calculation. The focus is now on using formulas to calculate surface are or volume of a rectangular prism. As such, I do not want my students to be bogged down in the calculation. I would rather they understand why they are multiplying length, width and height to find the volume of a rectangular prism. Calculators provide this opportunity.

  My students were thrilled that someone cared enough to provide brand new calculators for them to use! No more not having enough calculators for everyone - or ones that no longer worked. I now have enough working calculators for every student. The students are very respectful of their new calculators. They take care to return them and know how many should be in my bin. If any are missing, there is a hunt to find them.

  Thank you again for your generosity!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Spicher

  This classroom project was brought to life by Black History Month Partners and 3 other donors.

• Math Escape Rooms Create Excitement!

  Funded Feb 8, 2023

  Thank you so much for the opportunity to build a library of escape rooms for 7th grade math! Some escape rooms are completed online - others are completed on paper.

  Either way, students have to complete a task successfully by completing problems correctly to answer a puzzle to "unlock" the next task.

  Escape room activities offer students an engaging way to practice math. I usually have students work with a partner, which they all enjoy! Escape rooms provide an opportunity to practice in bite-sized chunks - usually 4 or 5 problems at a time. Upon completion, they immediately know if they solved the problems correctly or not. The students work to try to be the first to complete all of the puzzles and be the overall "winner, " but they are all winners for working hard and practicing their math skills.

  My students are always excited to do an escape room! Thank you again for your donation!”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Spicher

  This classroom project was brought to life by Black History Month Partners and one other donor.

• Spiral Review for Mastery

  Funded Jul 23, 2021

  Seventh grade math covers a lot of new topics, with 11 chapters in our curriculum. As a result, we must move quickly through the topics. Unfortunately, moving from one topic to the next often result in students "dumping" the information they learned about past chapters as soon as they take the test. My project tries to eliminate that information dump by continuing to expose students to topics we have already covered this year during their homework.

  The product I purchased from TeachersPayTeachers, with the gift card provided by donors, is an already completed spiral-review homework file. The file has one homework document per week, with 5 to 7 problems per day, Monday through Friday. The prepared documents take care of the spiral review for me, but I am able to edit questions if they are about a topic we have not yet covered. The consistency is appreciated by me and my students because they know what to expect each week. In addition, my students like that they are not expected to complete homework on a new topic. All of the homework questions cover topics we have already covered for weeks or months -- and they have notes from class that they can use to help complete it.”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Spicher

  This classroom project was brought to life by T-Mobile.

• Monitoring My Students

  Funded Feb 21, 2021

  Thank you so much for contributing to my project! While this project does not seem to have much impact on students, it meant the world to me as their teacher. My students are mostly low-income and minorities. Their families were greatly impacted by the pandemic, and they were adverse to returning to school this past fall even with strict masking, social distancing, and cleaning guidelines. As such, we started the year virtually and remained that way for the entire year.

  I got to meet my students for around one hour at the beginning of the year to pass out chromebooks, explain the schedule and show them how Google Classroom works. The rest of the time I have spent with them this year has been through a computer screen. We have a wonderful program that we use to monitor students while they are online and to place our video calls. However, when I share my screen to present a lesson, I am unable to see their faces. The additional monitor you provided enabled me to have their faces on one screen while I presented my lesson on another. This allowed me to see if someone was off-task, out of the room, or fully engaged. As such, I was then able to send a chat message to students to try to get them back on task or to acknowledge their participation and hard work.

  Thank you for this opportunity during this crazy, sometimes overwhelming, school year. It has made all the difference to me. I miss being with my students and seeing them every day. My second screen made virtual teaching so much better.”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Spicher

• Hands-On Math Increases Participation

  Funded Dec 31, 2016

  Thank you so much for your donation! The students were very excited that donors who did not even know them, or where Youngstown, Ohio is, gave money to allow us to receive resources to help them learn math.

  The biggest impact from the donation this year was the individual white boards. You only have so much white board space in a classroom, so the individual boards ensured that every student had the opportunity to "write on the board", as they enjoy doing. I used the boards primarily for arithmetic practice. In my 6th and 7th grade classes, the students learned -- or expanded upon -- equations and inequalities. Having them write the problems out on their own boards ensured full participation and allowed me to easily see which students understood - and which ones didn't. I could then post additional problems for the students who understood quickly, or work with students who were struggling.

  Over the summer, I will be formulating plans for the hanging file folder boxes. My goal is to have gap / enrichment work for students to grab from their own folder. Each year, I have students who missed topics from previous school years which prevents them from performing up to grade level as the topics expand. I am going to use our beginning of the year math assessments to identify those "gaps" and then provide work to fill those gaps. I would also like to reach the high performing students by providing extension activities to take them beyond what we are doing in class so they can continue to grow.”

  With gratitude,

  Mrs. Spicher