Past projects 20
Please Help Keep Our Learners Focused, Writing, and Empathetic!
Funded May 7, 2024Thank you so much for providing our learners with supplementary tools and a fabulous book that is helping them see themselves and build empathy for others!
It is so wonderful to have a fresh set of whiteboard markers that help students to differentiate between green (phonetically predictable) and red words ("rule-breaking"/following a pattern not yet learned) as we are doing our daily word-work lessons.
And, having more noise-cancelling headphones for students to use during book clubs as well as some additional sets to share with classroom teachers has been a great way to support students throughout their learning day.
Also, having wipes to clean the shared headphones, as well as our "whisper-reading phones" and tables has been a wonderful resource. And the fact that they are compostable, plant-based, vegan, and made in the USA makes us feel much better about using them.
Thank you so much for all of your support and generosity!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation and 2 other donors."A Kid's Book About. . . " Everything!
Funded Mar 31, 2023Thank you so much for your generosity! We LOVE these books and I have had multiple staff members share that finding a book written by someone who identifies as an expert on the topic, part of the community, or someone who's lived the experience carries so much more meaning. I've observed older students reading these books themselves, and students of all ages deeply engaged during read-alouds of these texts. I've also had teachers come to ask me if I have a book on a particular topic to send home with a family who wants to use the text to help their child(ren) understand and discuss a difficult topic.
These books are written about big and/or challenging topics in an authentic way, aimed at helping children to understand the concept at their developmental level. Not an easy task to take on, but the authors and publishers from "A Kids Book About..." do it so beautifully and effectively!
Thank you so much for helping us to include some of these titles in our school library, and to make others available for teachers to check out from our themed bins in our school's shared bookroom collection. As always, we could not have done it without your generosity and dedication to helping our school community! I appreciate you immensely!!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 4 other donors.Help Us Build Our Decodable Book Library
Funded May 10, 2023Thank you so much for your donations! Teachers and students have really appreciated some additional tools for helping to support their readers. We are just getting into the new year so our experience with these books is still somewhat limited, but the photos are beautiful in the photo books and I have seen students gravitate toward them for that reason. Then, when they open them and find that they are able to access the text on the pages as well, they willingly engage and try out their growing reading skills.
Teachers at our site are happy to have more books (always), and especially to add some more decodable options to our school's shared resources. We want to be sure that all students and teachers have the tools that they need to learn and grow, and these help to broaden our range of options. I also went to our local print shop and purchased some color copies of the digital lesson cards that Syllasense offers on their website, so we have one more layer of support built in for teachers and their young scholars.
Thank you so much for your generosity and support!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Foundation and 15 other donors.Help us Build our Collection of Multisensory Literacy-Learning Tools
Funded Sep 17, 2023Thank you so much for supporting this project! You are giving supplies to a team of teachers with your donations and thus, also helping a large number of students to access literacy learning in a fun, meaningful, and impactful way!
The sand trays will help us to teach letter formation and letter-sound connections, as well as help to build our young scholars' phonemic awareness through this multisensory activity. The crayons and grids will help students to spell a range of words accurately and facilitate an understanding of phonetically predictable words, as well as those that don't follow the patterns that they have learned.
These tools will help our teachers (including myself) to take on new learning right beside our young scholars. Thank you so much for making this possible.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
We Need More Voices: Striving to Increase Our Text Collection
Funded Nov 30, 2022Thank you for providing all of these amazing texts for our school community! They have impacted many students, teachers, and families and I have heard from multiple people that they were able to go in and find JUST the right book to share to help students feel included, validate their family structure, or address a comment made by one student that negatively impacted the feelings of another. Plus, the fifth-grade teachers were so happy to be able to borrow entire bins for use during their social-justice unit.
If it weren't for your ongoing generosity, we would not have been able to make this possible. And, it's now so much easier to see where the gaps STILL exist and to plan for adding more texts in the future. The beauty and challenge of books is that they are constantly being published and we realize that there are so many more that we can add to our already phenomenal collection.
Thank you for broadening our worldviews and helping to connect our students to one another and our global community. This incredible collection would not be possible without your generosity and dedication to improving the education of our students.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by an Anonymous Classroom Supporter and 3 other donors.Finding Ways to Help ALL of Our Readers Grow!
Funded Feb 17, 2022Thank you so much for your generosity and ongoing support! As our knowledge about reading acquisition continues to evolve, we are constantly seeking the best ways to support all of our readers to be as successful as possible in taking on this daunting task.
The professional book: Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates has been a valuable resource for supporting the learning needs of my literacy intervention students. The decodable readers have also been a valuable supplement to my lessons, and a great way to ensure that we are following a scope and sequence that will help students to acquire the phonics knowledge that they need to access a wide variety of texts.
In addition, it has been wonderful to be able to share these tools with other teachers who have students with a variety of different needs in one classroom.
Thank you for your generosity in donating to all of my projects, as well as your trust in my decision-making as I attempt to find ways to support students, staff, and families within our community.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
Reading to Increase Racial Justice and Representation
Funded Feb 10, 2022Thank you so much for helping us to add more books on racial justice and inclusion into our school's shared book collection. This allows us to access a range of important texts as individual resources, as well as think about how to use them in conjunction with the fabulous book by Lanesha Tabb & Naomi O'Brien: Unpack Your Impact: How Two Primary Teachers Ditched Problematic Lessons and Built a Culture-Centered Curriculum.
Thank you for helping to rethink how we are approaching our instruction, as well as for providing us with the tools to begin this work right away. As educators, we are constantly dedicating to evolving our practice and expanding our worldview.
Thank you again for your generosity, support, and dedication to making our world a better place for all.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by Munchkin and 4 other donors.Read-Alouds as the Catalyst for Conversations About Inclusion and Representation
Funded May 4, 2022We have really been enjoying the books that you helped to purchase for our school's shared book collection! It is so wonderful when a teacher comes to me, looking for just the right book to address a question from a student or a request from a parent, and I can reach into a bin and pull out a text (or several) to touch upon a topic of great significance, in an age-appropriate way. Read-alouds are such a wonderful way to touch upon issues of inclusion and to share a variety of different ways of being in this world.
The books that you made possible are organized into themed bins. This allows staff members to quickly flip through and select one to run back and read in their class when the moment arises. Or, teachers can check out entire tubs to bring back and allow their students to peruse as a part of their social-studies and/or reading curriculum. These texts cover a wide range of topics and the bins continue to evolve as we determine that we would like to sort them in different ways, which also helps us to discover if gaps exist that we need to fill.
Thank you for helping to provide us with such a strong foundation that we can now continue to build upon to meet the needs of our students, as well as broaden their worldviews. We return to the goal of creating mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors in our collection of texts. Thank you for helping us to work toward striking a balance for all of our students.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
¿Qué? Что? Quoi?Translator Pens Will Help Us Say, "What?"
Funded Oct 21, 2021It has been so amazing being able to share the translating pens and dictionaries with students and their families over the last couple of months. The bilingual dictionaries have been invaluable in increasing our students' vocabularies in a user-friendly and engaging format, and the translation pens have also allowed many more students and families to tap into the built-in translation in many of the Language Lizard bilingual books that we already had in our collection.
It is so wonderful to provide our students and families with tools to build literacy in both languages. And, I have also enjoyed learning a variety of words and phrases in my students' home languages.
Thank you for supporting our multilingual families, and helping us to show that we value a variety of languages and ALL that our students bring to our community!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by Dollar General Literacy Foundation and 5 other donors.Essential Reading--Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You
Funded Aug 12, 2021Thank you so much for your generosity, and for making it possible for our staff to experience Stamped for Kids together! We are currently in the process of reading and discussing it and I feel so fortunate to have this opportunity. We, as humans, educators, & colleagues, are becoming vulnerable and learning together. I am really looking forward to the myriad of ways that this is going to impact our students and community (both at school and beyond).
Once the staff has finished reading the book, we will discuss ways to use it, and what we have learned from it, with our students. This will be an ongoing process, and we have so very much work to do. Thank you for providing a book that will be a natural catalyst for important discussions, and vital work, moving forward.
Take care, and thank you so much for your support, generosity, and dedication to our students and learning community.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Bridgett
This classroom project was brought to life by Bill Gates and 5 other donors.