Past projects 3
BLS is in a Digital World
Funded Sep 23, 2020I want to thank you once again for your kindness and generosity in providing the technology my students needed in order to be successful in student learning. With your donation, I was able to buy 5 amazon fire tablets for the students in my school. During this time, due to the pandemic, technology is vital in our school.
Currently students need technology just to attend class every week. They sign onto a program called zoom to receive their live lessons and use google classroom to complete their assignments. These are both programs I was able to download onto the tablets so that they could use them at home and in the classroom.
Another way students are using the technology is to have access to reading materials for research or reading for pleasure. They can access the amazon library which provides many free books or they can go onto websites like Epic to have access to many books.
This technology has especially helped our students with special needs who need things like speech to text software, word prediction, or even manipulatives to help them with math and science.
The students particularly like finding new educational games to play, communicating with their peers, and every month students use the technology to complete video or picture submissions to be presented at our monthly virtual assemblies. They get a theme for the month and find a creative way to present something that goes with the theme.
Soon we will be starting back up our media club where students will create their own talk show using the technology that has been provided to them. They are really excited about that.
Without your help this would not have been possible.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Torres
This classroom project was brought to life by Con Edison and 9 other donors.I Love Reading
Funded Nov 13, 2018My students and I are extremely grateful for your kindness to us. Because of your donation to our project, I have been able to make my room a place where reading is fun and exciting for everyone.
In my room, I meet with students in small groups of 5-6 students throughout the day. Together we work on reading skills such as decoding, reading comprehension, and reading fluency. Your donation allowed me to buy flexible seating for my library so it is a place where students actually want to sit and read independently or with partners. When my students saw the new library seating they were anxious to sit down in the library and read. At the end of each lesson, we now spend 10-15 minutes reading independently or in partners. It is during this time that I am able to work one on one with students on things like fluency, decoding, and sight word recognition.
Another resource added to my room because of your generous donations is the large blue pocket chart. This chart allows me to display letters and sight words that we are working on in our lessons. By using the pocket chart, I am able to allow students the opportunity to be leaders of these activities. I now pick students every day to lead the sight word and letter sound routines. This gives them ownership of their learning and the students in the class LOVE it when one of their own peers are leading the lesson instead of me.
Lastly, my newspaper club that meets after school is enjoying the resources you have provided for my room. They use the flexible seating to sit and work on their hard hitting news articles for our student run newspaper.
I would like to thank you again for your kindness and I promise to use these resources to help my students become better readers and develop a love for reading.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Torres
Readers R' Us
Funded Dec 27, 2017I would like to thank you again for your generous donation to my classroom. Because of your kindness, I have received tools to help the students in my school become better readers.
The day we received the package from Lakeshore, my student's eyes sparkled. They immediately were curious about the sight word bingo and the "cool looking telephones" as they called it. I wasted no time in introducing these new tools that we would be using in our room.
We had been practicing sight words, so introducing sight word Bingo was the perfect way to have them practice this skill in a new and exciting way. The students loved playing bingo and continue to ask me to play again and again every day. The next day, we used the Building fluency kit along with sound phones to work in partnerships and practice reading out loud with expression. The students immediately realized that speaking loudly into these phones would hurt their ears and adjusted their volumes after laughing loudly at their mistake. These tools have been very helpful in allowing me to provide engaging activities to practice important reading skills and to help my students develop a love for reading.
We have yet to begin our next project, but we will be using the microphone that was purchased to work in small groups to record audio books of our favorite stories. This will be an extension of our work on reading with fluency and the students will have to make sure their audio books exhibit the skills being taught to improve their fluency and consequently their comprehension as well.
My students and I thank you again for your donations and we promise to use these tools to be great readers now and in the future.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Torres