Past projects 2
Exploring Our World With Reading: Words to Sentences to Books!
Funded May 10, 2023We are SO very pleased with these beautiful new reading materials! It was a great amount of lamination, but they are now ready-to-go! They have such a colorful display that all students commented on them when they entered the classroom for the back-to-school open house.
In the classroom, students use a folder to keep track of and document their progress as they work through the different reading boxes. The boxes each isolate specific elements of reading in the English language. They begin with phonetic words and then isolate various other patterns found in English such as blends, digraphs, long vowel sounds, and more! The cards are beautiful and all come with pictures.
The Sentence Builder cards and the Biome Readers work allow the students to find other reading activities that connect to writing (Sentence Builders) and geography and Montessori map work (Biome Readers) that are specific to their reading ability. They can access real and interesting information with isolated word and sound patterns. This work also allows the youngest students to be independent in their reading! It matches our spelling program for emergent spellers as well. It is colorful and inviting and they are excited to do this work every day!
Thank you SO much for your generous contribution to this project. It will truly open the 'World of Reading' to many new young readers!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Garcia
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Foundation and 19 other donors.Look at All I've Learned! Portfolio Albums for Montessori Children
Funded Jul 6, 2018Our new beautiful portfolios are colorfully on display on a shelf near our circle! We meet at circle multiple times a day to learn as a group. We see these albums together and discuss them weekly. The students like to share their albums with each other. We have been doing a lot of community building together and I think the portfolios being near us while we do this work is a wonderful element of our classroom community.
The students have begun to enter 'best works' into their portfolios during open work cycle time. They have made initial pages all about themselves such as their strengths, goals, and hopes for this year. This type of initial work fits well with our Montessori peace curriculum and our goal of helping students be life-long learners who take ownership of their learning and practice helping, kindness, grace, and courtesy.
Students have also entered their first 'published' writing piece [rough draft, revise, edit, rewrite (publish)] into their portfolios which was a personal narrative about themselves. It has been wonderful to see them get the hang of this new way of reflecting on, and sharing about, what they have learned and what they are doing in the classroom. They have also taken quickly to being able to use art materials such as special pencils, pens, and scrap-booking paper to beautify their portfolio pages. Thank you SO much for making this possible in my classroom! It will be a gift that lasts 3 years and a joy for each child when they leave the classroom after third grade.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Garcia