Past projects 5
Creating Young Scientists Through STEM Competition!
Funded Jan 29, 2024The resources we have received from your incredible generosity have been used all year by our sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students. We have been able to successfully run our after school stem program which is the Maryland Science Olympiad club. Our students not only use the supplies weekly to prepare for competition but they also attended events at two major universities using these supplies. In late winter our students competed against other scholars at Johns Hopkins University in an invitational. This opportunity helped prepare them for an even bigger competition in the future.
In mid spring our students went to Morgan State University to compete in the Baltimore City Science Olympiad. Due to their hard work and preparation and the assistance of the supplies they were given from this project, our students won awards in almost every category. Many students have decided to join the club again next year and some are even interested in exploring science, technology, or engineering as a future career. Thank you again for making all of this possible.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Herceg
Mic Check! Collaboration in a Digital World
Funded Mar 20, 2022Receiving headphones for our class while we were virtual was a complete game changer in terms of student involvement. Students could hear myself and one another through their microphone and were able to fully participate in lessons and labs.
We continue to use this excellent resource, primarily to improve reading skills. Many of our students are behind in their grade level reading ability. With the use of headphones it allows students to listen to audio of grade level text so that they can improve their understanding of scientific vocabulary and reading skills. Thank you for this incredible gift.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Herceg
Super Supplies for Science Success!
Funded Oct 31, 2019The impact of these donated supplies on our classroom has been tremendous! Rather than spend time seeking out supplies, borrowing from one another, and cutting corners our class is moving along swiftly and in a more organized fashion. Each day every student has access to a pencil: this small detail is critical to getting class started off right. Often students lose or break their pencils or do not have funds to buy new ones after the original set they had at the beginning of the year is used up. Many people forget that pencils are a consumable and they get worn down with each sharpening. Prior to the donation I had already purchased and given out hundreds of pencils at my own expense and our supply was at zero. This meant that many students came to class and could not complete the bell ringer as they had to wait to borrow a pencil from another student: no longer is this an issue. Each day I set out a cup of pencils for students who need one. Often, they return it at the end of class, but we no longer have to stress about it as there are enough available for everyone. Students should not be penalized at school for not having a writing implement. One specific project that has been greatly improved by these new resources have been the development of interactive science notebooks: having access to enough glue sticks and pencils each day for every student means that we have been able to include tabs, interactive notes, graphs, and charts into our notebooks. This is especially useful to students who may struggle to quickly copy detailed drawings or charts from a PowerPoint: now they can color or label instead and spend more time understanding and less time mindlessly duplicating from the board. Another specific classroom strategy I use is mental modeling, an important scientific practice where students are asked to observe phenomena and then draw representations of their interpretation of what is happening. Due to the gift of additional whiteboard markers each student has been able to greatly improve this skill. Rather than quickly jotting down a sloppy drawing on paper, students now work together in pairs or groups of four to draw large-scale models on desk-sized whiteboards. These they can annotate and label in color and then easily present their ideas to the rest of the class. This has led to rich discussions and allowed for strong constructivist learning to take place in our classroom.
When my students first saw these materials, they were shocked by the amount and thought that I had spent even more of my own money to purchase supplies for our classroom. When I explained that generous donors provided these materials because they wanted all of our students to be ready to learn each day regardless of ability to afford supplies many students immediately expressed gratitude. There has also been a noticeable increase in the respect students are showing school supplies in our room: previously students would often leave glue sticks uncapped, leave pencils on the floor, etc. Now students are far more likely to take care of our materials, often noting that these were given as a gift and that they should show respect. I am surprised and pleased with this result and hope it means that the glue sticks will make it through to the end of the year.
Up next for our class is a month-long deep dive into basic chemistry: this means that we will participate in many hands-on laboratory experiments. The generously donated supplies will go a very long way to ensuring success for this unit. In addition to the pencils which we use every day and the markers and glue sticks that are used at least once a week, our amazing donors also gave our room cleaning supplies. Every classroom benefits from the use of wipes to prevent the spread of germs but a science classroom needs them twice as much! When we spill chemicals or water or our elephant toothpaste demo overflows the paper towels and wipes come to the rescue. These consumables are critical to the safety and cleanliness of a science room. Already in the first few days of our chemistry lessons we have used these supplies multiple times, and we will continue to do so each day. Thank you so much to all of our donors: your gift has made such a difference for us.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Herceg
Hungry, Happy, and Healthy: Empowering Students Through Cooking
Funded May 14, 2019What an amazing and delicious project this has been! Over the last few weeks the seventh-grade scholars at Southwest Baltimore Charter School have honed their cooking skills through lessons, research, and practice. Guest expert Chef Brianna Billups was in our classroom for three days giving hands-on cooking lessons that were both inspiring and fun. Our students had been learning food science and the impact of what it means when we live in neighborhoods without access to healthy food. Bringing in a chef to teach the students to cook would allow them to overcome one of the barriers to quality food they face on a daily basis.
On day one she had the students make turkey burgers with sweet potato fries: the biggest takeaway for most of our students was that she had them learn how marinating meat can add major flavor impact. Even more importantly, using turkey rather than beef in your dishes is a healthy alternative. Students practiced chopping onions, toasting buns, and forming their own patties from the meat they marinated. One of our first observations was that ignoring the difference between teaspoon and tablespoon might mean that your dish ends up too salty! Day two of our cooking lessons focused on shrimp tacos. This was a new food for many of our youth. We marinated the shrimp, made homemade salsa (once again practicing our onion dicing skills), cooked the shrimp and toasted the tortillas. Some students used a lime juicer for the first time. The tacos were tasty and the smell had people from all over the school coming to our classroom for a taste. The third day of cooking class was the favorite of most students: with Chef Bri's guidance we made messy meatball marinara buns. Once again, the students substituted ground turkey for ground beef. We marinated the meat, chopped onions and garlic, toasted the buns, sliced mozzarella cheese, and assembled our sandwiches. Almost everyone was craving seconds after this meal.
Prior to Chef Bri's lessons students began to prepare by researching healthy recipes using Jamie Oliver's website as a jumping off point. They then met in teams to analyze nutritional data and rank recipes, finally choosing one they would attempt to cook themselves. Chef Bri taught us an important lesson: sometimes it is okay to treat ourselves with a snack or dessert if we cook it ourselves. A homemade treat is almost always healthier than a store bought one. With this in mind a few groups decided to try out healthy dessert alternatives while others focused on smoothies, breakfast foods, or even main dishes. After obtaining advice and skills from our guest chef each student practiced cooking their own recipes. Many groups made multiple attempts, altering the recipes to taste. Our final product was to put all of these recipes together in a digital cookbook which you can view here:
https://read.bookcreator.com/VWp7mjByZRXrWQDIHwytm5dVW9w2/q8Iro3AgScqaLViFLg1C1g The week after our cooking lessons ended Chef Bri returned to our school for a live tasting competition. The students prepared the food they had practiced making at home and had the chef and two other judges give them feedback. This was an invaluable experience for our scholars. Not only did they learn many important hands-on cooking skills that they can use for life but they are now more empowered to take their health into their own hands.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Herceg
This classroom project was brought to life by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and 4 other donors.The Sounds of Science
Funded Sep 25, 2018Receiving speakers and headphones has dramatically changed the quality of sound in our classroom. Previously, we had to hunt down speakers throughout the school and they were often outdated. This resulted in fuzzy and difficult to interpret sounds. Often the dialogue would be very quiet and the background or bass would be very loud. For our science classroom, we often use scientific demos online that require sound and our students could not adequately hear the instructions. The addition of headphones has allowed students to clearly hear the media and participate at their own pace, resulting in more students accessing the content and completing their work.
What is most exciting about receiving these products is the versatility the speakers provide in our classroom. We can now show films, watch scientific demonstrations, listen to music while quietly writing, and view documentaries related to our project work. Previously, we had to listen using laptop speakers which obviously are not very good. We avoided showing any videos or listening to anything because it was so challenging for most students to hear it. Now we have so many more resources available to us.
In particular, this technology has benefited our special needs students the most. Due to the wide range of skill levels in our classroom as well as hearing issues, some students are unable to keep up with video tutorials or follow along and take notes quickly when watching a documentary or demonstration. The addition of headphones has allowed students to clearly hear the media and participate at their own pace, resulting in more students accessing the content and completing their work.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Herceg