Ms. Dobson's Classroom Edit display name

Past projects 2

• Social Emotional Learning with Culturally Diverse and Engaging Characters

  Funded Aug 13, 2021

  Thank you for helping me the make my therapy effective and culturally relevant. This project has benefited all of my students with communication deficits and exceptional needs by providing contextualized and language rich learning experiences. I have been able to target multiple different speech and language skills, including sequencing and retell, compare and contrast, and describing. The students are engaged in stories that feature relatable childhood experiences in fun and engaging ways. Also, the variety of books I received helps me support students who are functioning at different developmental levels.

  I have seen my students' attention increase as they learn about diverse cultures and about characters that look like them. As students compare and contrast characters of different ethnicities, cultures, and abilities, they build empathy towards differences.

  All of my students are learning social skills, empathy, compassion, kindness, helping, healthy habits, growth mindset, family, and feelings. All of my students are learning important life lessons like the best gift comes from the heart; sharing is fun; reading is fun; it's good to be kind; don't sweat the small stuff; if at first it doesn't work, try again!

  I look forward to a great year of learning! Thank you so much!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Dobson

  This classroom project was brought to life by Bill Gates and 9 other donors.

• Teaching Talking Through Story Telling

  Funded Jul 31, 2019

  The funding of my DonorsChoose project added over 20 books for my speech therapy room at Polk. I am deeply grateful to your generosity.

  I am a speech-language pathologist in a Title I school, meaning that a large number students come from low-income households. My students have speech and language disorders and special learning needs. They are also ethnically and linguistically diverse. Most of my students have language disorders related to developmental delay, learning disability, intellectual disability, autism, or other health impairment. The severity of language impairments of my students ranges from mild to profound. Yet I am able to connect with all of my students through shared reading activities.

  I use the donated story books to work on students' speech, language, and social skills. Research shows that use of literature in instruction is especially helpful in teaching speech and language skills like describing, sequencing story steps and retelling narratives. Not only is this evidence-based, but it is also appropriate for children of a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds because it provides instruction of vocabulary and concepts in a context-embedded format. The donated books are perfect for teaching narratives and plot structure.

  My students find the books engaging and fun. My students are engaged in reading and thematic activities. So far I have used the books Pete the Cat Rocking' in My School Shoes by Eric Litwin and Spot Goes to School by Eric Hill to teach back-to-school readiness behaviors for younger students in September. The book Go Away, Big Green Monster Ed Emberley is a fun book that my students connected with in October (thematic activity for Halloween). The book Turkey Trouble is a fun book that engaged my students in story sequencing and retelling in November (thematic activity for Thanksgiving).

  Each week, I conduct "Word of the Week" activities with my kindergarten students. For example, I use the book Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson to teach the words "want" and "more"; Let me Finish by Minh Le to teach the words "me" and "finish"; The Little Red Hen to teach the word "help". I use the book From Head to Toe by Eric Carle to teach body parts and following directions. I use the book Today is Monday by Eric Carle to teach concepts such as days of the week and vocabulary for food items.

  My older students read the books, focusing on story sequencing, and retelling. We discuss emotions experienced by characters in each book and we practice perspective taking. The books have helped us go beyond simple emotions like happy, sad, and mad to more complex feelings like frustrated, annoyed, worried, and relieved.

  As the winter season approaches, I look forward to using Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London to teach my younger students winter clothing vocabulary and associated actions "put on" and "take off" and The Gingerbread Man by Catherine Mccafferty for futher focus on story telling and sequencing. This spring I plan to use the book Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt to teach basic concepts "up" and "down". I look forward to doing a month full of Dr. Seuss books in April to teach basic concepts, prepositions, and negation, and to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday.

  Through teaching in a contextually embedded format, my students can apply the concepts they learn to their lives and the world around them. It has been exciting to use these books to help my students increase their speech, language, and social skills. I know that my current and future students will benefit from these materials for years to come.

  Thank you for helping make this happen!

  Sincerely,”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Dobson