Past projects 2
Seeds for an Autism Classroom
Funded Feb 24, 2025Thank you very much for your donations! It would otherwise be a challenge to create a classroom that supports diverse learners. The contributions are greatly appreciated and will go toward ensuring my students with autism as well as other students who benefit from sensory and functional are successful in my classroom.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Esther
Building a Classroom of Belonging
Funded Sep 1, 2024I hope you've had a wonderful Thanksgiving, for those who celebrate it. The spirit of the season meshes perfectly with the gratitude I have toward each of you for the support you've given me in these crucial first months of teaching in New York. It's been a challenge, but your donations have allowed me to set up a classroom that has all the basic necessities and facilitates my students' learning far more than would have been possible otherwise.
Thanks to your donations, my co-teacher and I have been able to organize our supplies and delineate the physical spaces of our room clearly, which is especially important for those students who require more structure in order to feel at ease and ready to learn. It's hard to explain the impact of things like magnets, storage bins, cut-out letters, pocket charts, and a pencil sharpener because they are embedded into the skeleton of the classroom, but since these essentials ensure that the practical foundations of the class are firmly in place, I have had more freedom to focus on the work of actually teaching the students, both academically and social-emotionally.
In that vein, the leaf rocker chairs have been a very useful addition to the class; every day the students are all clamoring to use them, but we have assigned them to certain students who get distracted or have difficulty sitting still as a way to help them focus when we are on the rug for lessons. I am very carefully using the TPT gift card to buy only resources that I absolutely need and that would be difficult for me to make, such as a Google Sheets assessment tracker for Wit and Wisdom, the ELA curriculum that my school has implemented this year.
We have used the games during special "Game Days" that our students look forward to greatly. During this time, we assign the students to groups, and as they play the different games, they practice social skills like taking turns and getting along with classmates. Lastly, I made and printed many affirmations for the mirror, and the students attached the ones that they wanted to its frame. Part of their morning routine is to stop by the "Affirmation Station" to give themselves some love. Much of our class needs to grow in confidence--our students are all gifted and bright in their own ways, but due to various experiences, they struggle to believe this-- and I am hoping that the mirror in conjunction with the relationships that we have built with them and the other tools and strategies that we are using will help them to blossom this year. We have already seen a lot of progress!
With that, I will just say one more time that I appreciate each of you so very much. Thank you for choosing to sow into my sweet students' lives. Have a beautiful holiday season!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Esther