Fundamentals for Reaching the Stars in Reading

Funded Sep 14, 2024

Let me start by thanking you tremendously for donating to my classroom. My seventh graders were excited to use materials that were designated for their classroom. Working in a school with limited resources can be challenging and with the help of having donors who were able to supply students with daily essentials to help them excel in reading is a blessing. The most valuable tool we use daily is the work bins. My students rotate into three groups for daily reading instruction and having a work bin at each station where the students are able to get the assignments they need and the instructions on how to complete them makes the rotations go smoothly. Students also benefited greatly from using the plastic sleeves with the dry erase markers. Here each week for review, I am able to place a worksheet in the sleeve and students use the markers to answer the questions. For each seventh grade class, I am able to use the same worksheet repeatedly because the students are using dry erase markers to complete and not actually writing on the worksheet. This ends up saving a huge amount of time in printing and using paper.

The pocket charts are a valuable asset in keeping students' work, tests, quizzes, and homework organized. Students are able to go to the pocket chart organizer and get any missing worksheets or assignments. The resource is also good for helping me stay up on grading work in a timely manner and not misplacing or losing any assignments. The digital timers came in handy so that at each station the students knew how much time they had to finish their work and when the timer went off they knew it was time to transition to the next station.

Once the classroom was setup and organized, my students felt a sense of belonging and had the knowledge base to run our reading rotations effectively. Students had access to all the materials they needed and in the long term has improved their work efficiency.

Today, the students are thriving in doing our reading rotations and everyone has adjusted to our organized system. Our next step is to find a system to improve our math learning groups and how to make transitions smoothly in math class. Again, thank you soo much for making my seventh grade classroom environment a great place for students to learn and be successful.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Ceasar