Past projects 4
Literacy Games for Struggling Readers
Funded Feb 14, 2024These games and activities have been the best motivators for student learning! The students have loved playing the games and I have loved all the extra practice on literacy skills they have gotten because of the games. Student reading fluency has increased as well as a love and joy for reading.
I am so grateful to the Donor's Choose community for all the support given to me and the students. It is not easy teaching in an economically disadvantaged school, but having these games and the support to purchase them helps me to carry on with the important work of teaching students a love for literacy. Thank you from my whole heart to yours!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Gonzalez
Closing the Equity Gap One Reader at a Time
Funded May 9, 2023I am so grateful for the 30 hours of Morphology training I received this summer from your generous donations. I can't wait to begin this important work with my students this year. The materials and training are so useful. This system for instruction will help meet the needs of so many students struggling with vocabulary and the English language.
The training came with lessons on specific affixes, Latin, and Greek words. Being able to bring Latin and Greek morphology to students who can not afford private tutoring will help them become better readers and thinkers. It was fascinating to dig deeper into the English language and history behind our rich language. I'm excited to see how the students respond, and how they will start making word meaning connections in our language. I am so grateful, thankful, and blessed to be a part of this training. So thank you again for making this experience happen for me and my students!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Gonzalez
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Foundation and 13 other donors.Books for At-Risk Readers
Funded Apr 7, 2022In elementary school, students who struggle to read many times struggle in two areas. They have weak phonemic awareness (being able to manipulate, isolate, and blend sounds together) and they have weak phonics skills (knowing the correct sounds that letters make). For this reason, to survive reading, many students learn to become great word guessers instead of doing the work of decoding the word sound by sound. In order to address their areas of weakness, and change a student's word reading behavior teachers often use what are called decodable texts. Decodable texts are full of words that are decodable to a reader like the word "bat". Each letter says the sound that it should say in that word. When students practice reading these special books their reading skills start to accelerate.
I am a reading interventionist. I work with the lowest performing students in our school. When students come to my table I give them explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. Then, we practice in our decodables so that they can apply the skills they learned. I let them take the books home to practice with.
These students are making so many gains in their reading! They are excited to read the Bob Books and take them with them. Not only are their skills growing, but so is their confidence. They are now seeing themselves as readers. One of my students before, told me that he couldn't read, is now saying, "I can read!" Thank you to this community for gifting my students with these books. It has made a huge difference at my little table with all of these students!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Gonzalez
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose community & an Anonymous Partner and 14 other donors.The Study of Power: Historical Fiction Book Clubs
Funded Dec 1, 2020As the new books arrived into our classroom, students kept asking when they could read them. They have been so excited to dig into these historical fiction books. When the day finally arrived for our book clubs to begin, they actually cheered in the classroom. We have been heavily preparing for our state wide assessment, and the students were very ready to have the opportunity to read books instead of passages and have meaningful discussions with peers.
As students have been reading, they are becoming more aware of how events of a time period shape a character's perspective. This has lent itself to some powerful classroom conversations around the idea of how history is shaped, and whose point of view is telling the historical events. We have also explored who has the power in each of the stories, and how power can be taken. These students are definitely walking away with some critical thinking skills and a new way to look at history.
We want to express a huge heart felt thank you for your contributions to this project. These books have sparked some powerful ideas in our students. We could not have done this project without you!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Gonzalez
This classroom project was brought to life by Perry and Donna Golkin Family Foundation and 8 other donors.