Mr. Kooienga's Classroom Edit display name

Current requests

Past projects 7

• Novel Study Books

  Funded Oct 5, 2024

  Thank you for donating books to our classroom. The students are so excited to begin reading them during our novel study time. Your donation has allowed the kids to have more choice in which books they want to read and has opened the door for them to explore different types of fictional stories.

  We love to use novel studies to describe characters, events, and to work on finding themes that we can apply to our own lives.

  We greatly appreciate you partnering with us in our class' education. We could not hold novel studies the way we do without donors like you.

  Thank you again for donating books to our classroom.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga

  This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Foundation and one other donor.

• Novel Study Book Choices

  Funded Sep 25, 2024

  I want to thank you so much for donating books to our classroom. These books will give students more opportunities to choose books that interest them and that allow them to practice our reading skills in class while also incorporating high interest level texts.

  These texts will be used to help students learn about characters and how characters can change overtime through a series of events. We will also be using these books to take a look at theme and how we can learn what this book is teaching us and apply it to our own lives.

  Thank you again for donating books to our class. We are so excited to dig into them and start reading them.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga

• Organization for Math Supplies

  Funded Aug 15, 2024

  Thank you for donating the math storage bins to our classroom. We have been starting a new math curriculum this year that has many different pieces to allow kids to not only learn math, but to explore math. With all those pieces comes the necessity for storage and with these shelves, it really helps us stay organized and to be able to find the supplies that the students need quickly and efficiently.

  Thank you again for supporting our class. We greatly appreciate it and we will make sure to put the shelves and drawers to good use.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga

• Social/Emotional Learning

  Funded Feb 22, 2023

  Thank you for sending our classroom books that will help us teach our social/emotional curriculum. The students love to use and learn from picture books. We are excited to read them to learn about friendship, patience, including others, making good choices, and so much more.

  Each day has a set apart time in our curriculum to work with the students on Social/Emotional skills. Besides using examples from what the students are going through at school, it always helps to have a book to show them another example.

  The novel that was gifted to the classroom, The Unteachables, has some really great lessons. We use the book to talk about how our past mistakes do not have to define our future and how one student standing up for what is right can make all the difference.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga

• Bringing Science to Life

  Funded May 31, 2022

  I want to thank you for your generosity to our classroom. The kids were very excited to see the science project that we will be doing later in the year. Students always love classroom pets and this project will not only give them a pet fish, but will bring our science curriculum to life with the use of an aquaponics system. In one of our science chapters the students learn how some places use large aquaponics systems to create food for the nearby areas. The system that you purchased for our class will give us an opportunity to see how one of these systems work. I look forward to using it with the students after winter break.

  Thank you again for all your support.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga

• Book Clubs

  Funded Feb 24, 2022

  Thank you for supporting our classroom this year. The students are greatly enjoying participating in Novel Studies this years. Novel Study time in our classroom is a time where students get to choose their own book from our selection and read and discuss it with other students. Thanks to you, we are now able to offer more choices to the students. Thanks to your donations, students will now be able to choose the book Pollyanna, (which is a great book to talk about thankfulness and the power of a positive attitude) and Space Case which is a wonderful mystery book.

  Thank you again for putting books into students' hands.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga

• Dreaming and Learning Through Picture Books

  Funded Dec 31, 2019

  Our class would like to thank you for your wonderful gift of books that you donated to our classroom. Our class loves reading books and are always excited when new books arrive.

  We use many of the books to start off our lessons for the day. Many of the books we use to introduce theme, characters, figurative language and so much more. This has been a fun way to get the students excited for learning.

  Another way we have used the books in the classroom is based on topics. Many of the books that were donated have themes of kindness, helpfulness, or inclusion. These books are great to get out during the times where we review these concepts with the students.

  We cannot thank you enough for your kindness and generosity.”

  With gratitude,

  Mr. Kooienga