Past projects 8
The Tidy Classroom
Funded Nov 5, 2024We really appreciate your donations! They are helping our class stay neat, tidy, and organized. Our class now has disinfecting wipes to clean our tables at the end of the day. Any accidental marker or crayon mark gets wiped away at the end of the day. The tissues have also been making our winter sick season more tolerable. Students don't have to resort to rigid school paper towels when they get a runny nose.
The storage bins have also been helpful. They keep our materials organized for easy access when needed. Students now have a place to put their group's handwriting packets away. They can go to their group drawer to retrieve them and then quickly store them when they are done with their packet.
Again, thank you so much for your contributions. They are keeping our class tidy and running smoothly.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
Furnishing the Classroom
Funded Aug 14, 2024I am really grateful for your donations to our classroom. With our new furniture, students now have more comfortable seating and are more organized with their materials.
The stools are great for small group conferences with the teacher. The stools are lighter to move than the chairs. The students find it easy to move them for a quick 15-minute conference. The lower height of the stool also makes it more comfortable on 4th and 5th grade knees, since their knees don't touch the table.
Our mailboxes and storage cabinet provide great organization. I can keep track of which students took their handouts home and which ones I need to give reminders to. The cabinet puts out of sight materials, such as art crafts, that we use on special occasions.
All these additions to the classroom are making it run more efficiently!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
This classroom project was brought to life by The Gates Foundation and one other donor.Math Centers Materials
Funded Jul 30, 2024These donations have provided helpful math tools for our fourth and fifth graders as we learn about factors, multiples, and fractions.
In order to identify factors and multiples, it is important that students are fluent in their multiplication facts. Then they can notice common factors and multiples, explain why those commonalities exist, and apply them to real-life situations. The multiplication and division flashcards were a fun way for students to practice the basic multiplication facts. With more practice, students were observing more patterns between the factors and multiples of numbers. The calculators were also a quick way to check for mistakes in their multiplication.
In our fractions unit, we compared fractions. It was challenging for students to understnad that the greater the denominator, the smaller the size of the fraction. The notation of the denominator challenges their understanding that the greater a number, the greater the amount. Therefore, we needed a lot of visuals. The fraction magnets were a helpful manipulative, as students were able to put the fractions side-by-side to see how the greater denominator had smaller pieces.
As we continue into the school year, we are looking forward to using the decimal dice to practice operations with decimal numbers, as well as the centimeter cubes to study volume!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
Start of the School Year Stock Up
Funded Jul 30, 2024The "Start of the School Year Stock Up" project helped our class have a successful start to the 2024-2025 school year. The project provided us with some of the essential materials needed for fourth and fifth grade. This was especially important, as our school temporarily relocated this year due to construction. The relocation made it difficult to find and distribute materials. However, with support from our donors, we were able to acquire these essentials on time: science notebooks, chart paper, flip chart markers, ziploc bags, and some art supplies.
One everyday essential for our class is chart paper and flip chart markers. This is how I often present lessons. I also use these to make anchor charts and posters that serve as reminders of topics we covered in class.
The students were particularly excited to use their spiral notebooks as their science journals for scientific sketching, observations, and reflections. As we did our compost investigation, students used their notebooks to record their observations and start making hypotheses about why waste changes over time. They were not just doing science, they were also developing their language skills by adding labels to their sketches, finding precise descriptive words, and discussing with their classmates. We will continue to use these items throughout the year!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
Classroom Essentials
Funded Jul 27, 2023I really appreciate your donations towards our classroom materials. They helped us get started with the school year with positive routines, organization, and center activities.
One of the routines that we practice daily is our interactive journals. We write letters to each other and respond. We were excited to get our own individual journals! We enjoy writing messages back and forth to each other. Furthermore, the journals are helping us develop the habit of reflection through journaling.
We are using a lot of the other materials for literacy and math centers. These help us reinforce some of the things that we have learned. We use the markers to color-code and remember categories based on our research on ecosystems. We also laminate math games, make decimal numbers with the dice, and use envelopes to store our fraction strips. With the donated materials we can easily store these materials and reuse them through the course of the year.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
This classroom project was brought to life by Kleenex and one other donor.Essential Materials
Funded May 7, 2022Thank you all for your generous donations to our classroom! Through your contributions, our class started off the school year equipped with the essential materials that are part of our routines and daily learning activities.
In literacy, every student was prepared with writing tools that support them through the writing cycle. They had a notebook for brainstorming ideas. For our first project, a realistic fiction story, students used the notebooks to plan traits for their characters. As we transitioned to the drafting stage, students used legal pad paper to elaborate the events of the story. With different sets of paper, students have a concrete indicator to differentiate between the stages of the writing cycle. Their writing folders helped them organize all the parts of their stories, as they progressed into the revision, editing, and publishing stages.
In math, our graph notebooks have been helpful in recording the number data we observe. They are essential in facilitating our understanding of the relationship between area and multiplication. This year, we are also emphasizing group work in math. To showcase their group's solutions, students use chart markers on poster paper to make their ideas visible to the whole class.
Although literacy and math are the core of our school schedule, students also need time in class for mental calmness. We've made great use of our watercolors and paper during art and choice time to destress and restore our minds.
We appreciate all the materials we received, as they have been essential for our everyday learning.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
This classroom project was brought to life by Chevron and 5 other donors.Young Historians Learn to Empathize Through Historical Fiction
Funded May 13, 2019Our class was delighted to receive new resources that will help them immerse themselves in California history and historical fiction novels! They got a sneak peek into their history book and made some initial predictions on the aspects of California history that they will be learning about this year: the missions, the Gold Rush, and immigration.
They were also excited for the number of choices they had for their historical fiction book clubs! With more books to choose from, students will be more motivated to contribute to their book club discussions. Some of the students are even tempted to get ahead in their books.
The students and I are all very grateful for the support! We are excited to continue exploring the past and making connections to our present and future through informational and narrative reading, discussion, and written reflection.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda
This classroom project was brought to life by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and 4 other donors.Math Motivation
Funded Sep 12, 2018We are very grateful for your contribution to our math class! The new materials have helped students decrypt the more abstract concepts of fourth grade math in fun and engaging ways. Students were happy to see how much our community cares for them. They were excited with the variety of math center activities they now have -unifix cubes to build with, pattern blocks to design, and cards for place value games.
The notebooks were helpful in furthering our understanding of multiplication and division. The grid paper helped with the transition from one-digit multiplication to two-digit multiplication. It also gave us a visual way to connect multiplication and division to their representation with area.
We are currently working on our decimal unit. The base ten blocks scaffold students' conceptual understanding of numbers. Students are now making progress on the relationship between a whole and its parts. The blocks helped students describe how a unit can be divided into equal parts of 10 or 100. While they struggle to master the vocabulary for decimals, the students refer to the blocks to express their thinking. As we extend the "whole and parts" concept, the shapes and protractors will be particularly useful in seeing the different shapes a whole can be divided into and the patterns in the measurements of these shapes.
Thanks again for elevating our motivation and learning in math!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Griselda