Past projects 147
Science With Style!
Funded Nov 28, 2011This past Wednesday, my Science Challenge Club members and I boarded a train for our first science fair. With posters in tow and some butterflies in the belly, my students made myself and our school proud with excellent presentations and great spirits. As you can see from our photos, that day we stood out among the several schools at the fair not just because of the fruits of our work, but by the shirts on our backs! I think that a lot of the nervousness they felt that day was lessened when they could look around and see so many members of their club unified not just by their work, but by these really snazzy shirts.
The shirts you provided for us certainly stood out among all of the groups in attendance. We received a lot of compliments, and even some "where did you get those?" (I didn't forget to mention Donorschoose.org!). Even the keynote speaker wanted one! In all, my students did a wonderful job presenting their work and are bustling with confidence and excitement as we gear up for the culminating science symposium in late May. They will remember this day forever, and when they picture it, they may not perfectly remember all of the faces or what was said, but they will remember the feelings of the day and the T-shirts we all shared. These are a physical reminder they can always look at to transport them back to this day. I thank you for helping make it unforgettable for them and for me, as well.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
This classroom project was brought to life by ABC Family and 3 other donors.We'll Find Our Work In A Flash With USB Drives
Funded Oct 26, 2011A whole lot of thanks are due to you, the many donors who made this project a reality. We are finally putting the USB drives you sent to good use, and I see them being used more and more as the year goes on.
As part of our students' graduation requirements, they must create and present a portfolio each semester of their best work. We spend well over a month preparing: we gather and select work from their files, we write, edit, and rewrite essays about what they learned and about their own personal growth. In years past, much of the writing came by hand, which becomes very time consuming when each draft must be written anew. Until your USB drives arrived, only a small handful of students were able to take their work with them for later revision. With new USB drives in hand, nearly every student was using word processing and computers to reduce the amount of time spent on rewriting, allowing them to focus more on the substance of their portfolios. Just a few days ago, these portfolios were presented at small roundtables with other students and at least one teacher. Students dressed up in shirts, ties, and dresses, and just like a masters or doctoral defense, sat and discussed their work in the language of their new home, English. These were some of the best portfolios I have seen. I'd like to think that part of the reason was that they had an added tool, the USB drive, to help them prepare this time around.
As you can also see in the photos we sent to you, students are using these drives for more than just writing. Just a day after portfolio, students were taking pictures of cells in our microscopes and saving them on their USBs as evidence of their observations. Soon, I know we will be using them to save lab reports and save resumes we will work on in Advisory class. By the time students are visiting college fairs in 11th grade, they will have saved a large amount of work and documentation of their learning that they can then share with prospective colleges.
This little do-it-all tool you so generously provided is starting to change the way my students look at work and learning. They are finding it easier to do all their work, and it is thanks to you. Please continue supporting education through this site, your community, and your politicians. We teachers and our students need all the great opportunities available to us because of great folks like you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
Save Our Work! USB Drives for College Bound ELLs
Funded Sep 23, 2011A whole lot of thanks are due to you, the many donors who made this project a reality. We are finally putting the USB drives you sent to good use, and I see them being used more and more as the year goes on.
As part of our students' graduation requirements, they must create and present a portfolio each semester of their best work. We spend well over a month preparing: we gather and select work from their files, we write, edit, and rewrite essays about what they learned and about their own personal growth. In years past, much of the writing came by hand, which becomes very time consuming when each draft must be written anew. Until your USB drives arrived, only a small handful of students were able to take their work with them for later revision. With new USB drives in hand, nearly every student was using word processing and computers to reduce the amount of time spent on rewriting, allowing them to focus more on the substance of their portfolios. Just a few days ago, these portfolios were presented at small roundtables with other students and at least one teacher. Students dressed up in shirts, ties, and dresses, and just like a masters or doctoral defense, sat and discussed their work in the language of their new home, English. These were some of the best portfolios I have seen. I'd like to think that part of the reason was that they had an added tool, the USB drive, to help them prepare this time around.
As you can also see in the photos we sent to you, students are using these drives for more than just writing. Just a day after portfolio, students were taking pictures of cells in our microscopes and saving them on their USBs as evidence of their observations. Soon, I know we will be using them to save lab reports and save resumes we will work on in Advisory class. By the time students are visiting college fairs in 11th grade, they will have saved a large amount of work and documentation of their learning that they can then share with prospective colleges.
This little do-it-all tool you so generously provided is starting to change the way my students look at work and learning. They are finding it easier to do all their work, and it is thanks to you. Please continue supporting education through this site, your community, and your politicians. We teachers and our students need all the great opportunities available to us because of great folks like you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
Help Us Think Big with a Microscope
Funded Jul 22, 2011This week my students are peering into the objectives of their microscopes, looking at cells undergoing mitosis and meiosis. Normally, when we study these topics, I am met by the stifling of yawns and even a few that are not stifled. Understanding intricate cellular processes is not easy to make accessible and real for many students, and mine are no exception. When I first started teaching, I would rely heavily on textbooks and handouts when I taught this subject. No more. At every opportunity I am trying to get them observing, manipulating and experimenting. One of the challenges with this has always been teaching sound microscope skills and getting us all talking about the same thing. It's never easy to do, especially when students and I are not even in agreement about what we are looking at.
This microscope allows us to take advantage of one of the most fundamental advances in biology - digital photography. As my students are observing in this scope, we also have it connected to the classroom projector. Gone are the days of people looking at air bubbles and cracks on the glass. After seeing and discussing onion cells undergoing mitosis, we are looking forward to later this week when we are expecting the delivery of asexual organisms - hydra and planarians - that we have never studied before. In a classroom where English is the second language, we are all able to communicate clearly while we use this microscope.
In addition to the benefits in my classroom, this scope has already been tested out on studying yeast, an independent research project of one of our more enterprising students. Without this scope's delicate controls for manipulating the stage and light source his ability to quantify his results would simply not happen. Thanks to you, he will likely have a strong entry for the upcoming year's city science and technology fair and it couldn't have been done without you. Your donation is directly responsible for advancing the quality of my teaching and for providing new and exciting opportunities for my students. Thank you for this wonderful contribution to our school. I hope you will continue to support education and the sciences either through Donorschoose.org or any other way that improves educational opportunities for kids. ”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
Amplify Our DNA Projects with PCR Beads
Funded Aug 26, 2011The last several months have been exciting ones in our science lab. We have quickly put your donated PCR beads to use doing real, original science. Several teams of students that participate in our after school Science Challenge Club have piloted a project we hope to do in the future with all of our classes. At the prompting of a science project competition by the world-renowned Cold Spring Harbor Labs, my students formed their own projects around the technique of DNA barcoding - a way of using short DNA sequences to identify species. So far, students have collected dried seahorses and medicinal plants, plucked pigeon feathers from the ground, and ground up spices all in the hopes of answering some fundamental questions: is this the species we think it is? Is it endangered? What's here?
The essential step in this process is the amplification of DNA we have collected and extracted from our samples. Without amplification the amount of DNA we get is too small to observe. Quite literally overnight, we take these extracted samples, mix them together with your PCR beads, and in the morning we have billions of copies of the DNA we want to read. In short, this is work that is not going to take place without your donation.
As we progress further into the spring, my science challenge club members will be bringing the results of these experiments to two citywide science fairs. Your donation is catapulting them on their first steps into potential careers in science. My full classes will also be using these beads soon as we begin to extract and analyze their own DNA. We will tackle the difficult question, "Does race exist?" in science, and as part of their humanities classes as they study colonization in Africa and the Holocaust.
Thank you so much for allowing us to bring these authentic learning opportunities to our students and please continue to to be an advocate for meaningful, impactful education through venues like Donorschoose. ”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
Planning for Success with Daily Planners
Funded Sep 17, 2011Thanks to your generosity, several weeks ago we received 4 heavy boxes of planners. By the end of the week, the boxes were empty - Every student on my team received one of the planners and had already begun filling it with important dates like school holidays, quizzes, and due dates for homeworks. At first it was a slow process, with some students fumbling to find the right page, or asking for white-out to correct where they wrote the wrong date or misplaced an assignment. By the second day though, most were getting the hang of it and quickly writing in their upcoming assignments.
Now that we are several weeks into this experiment, I can say it has made a difference in my classes. Every teacher on the team is using the planner in class, helping make something unfamiliar into almost a second nature. Students who always questioned missed assignments are now at the very least keeping track of what's coming. Many of them are not where I want them to be yet because they are still missing assignments, but I can tell that they can see that place from where they are. Like anything else I teach, this is going to take repetition, but at least now we are able to practice our organizational skills, all thanks to your planners!
Thank you for giving us this invaluable tool for teaching our students how to be better learners. I look forward to sending you soon their thank you letters so you can read about it in their own words.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
This classroom project was brought to life by Quill.com and 9 other donors.Cameras For Learning Science And English
Funded Apr 18, 2011Let me start by saying thank you one and all for your generous donation to my classroom of these gorgeous cameras. Already your gift has unfettered my students and I, giving us the freedom to take photos when and where we choose. As you see from my photos, my students this last month have been taking photos of our local neighborhood as part of our My Community, My World project. All of the pictures were taken with the cameras we got from Donorschoose. My students found lots of interesting critters and plants in our heavily urbanized neighborhood. They were able to capture most of them without harm thanks to these cameras.
At this early part of the year, many students have little to no English skills to fall back on. All of them however have a rich variety of experiences from their home countries. We decided to make presentations comparing their home cities to our new one here in New York. While planning their presentations this week, we pored over the hundreds of pictures they chose to take. Having the common experience of going into the neighborhood together helped, but having time to really look at their photos allowed them to reconstruct the moment and write about it in English. They even used some photos from their expeditions for math class, calculating proportions and scales of the trees they were standing next to.
It is projects like these they will remember as they build their new life here in America. Thanks to you we had the tools to make it possible. Many more projects like this will be possible this year and for years to come thanks to your donations.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
Megabytes for Making Microscope Movies.
Funded Feb 20, 2011Where do I begin when I have so many people to thank? There are at least 26 donors who made this proposal reality, and several more who are part of a larger group or prefer to remain anonymous. The sheer number of donors gives me so much hope for the future of education in our country. Turn on the news today and politicians will be talking about slashing school budgets. In all cases it is not only the demonized teachers who bear the brunt of cuts, but very directly the children as well. Fewer teachers mean larger classes and smaller budgets mean less materials for those students. Next year my school will be facing cuts in the amount of paper and markers we are able to use. This is before we even began to set budgets for science materials or computers to upgrade our aging laptops.
Your donation was a piercing light through this doom and gloom. It speaks to the high importance of education in our society when so many people like yourself are willing to give hard earned dollars to a teacher with a vision in a school you may not know to students you've never met. My students do not take your gift lightly, either. I am a frequent user of Donorschoose.org, thankfully with much success. Therefore, my students are not strangers to receiving new supplies or equipment. When I unveiled the new computer to them though, they were astounded. "What is that, a TV?" asked one student. "No," I replied. "It's better...we can use it to take pictures and make movies of what we see in the microscope." Now while it would be nice for this to be met by applause, I have to be honest, there were groans. The first few times we tried it out though, there were "ooohs" or mouth agape staring.
This utterly beautiful machine you have sent us makes science more accessible to students who normally don't access much due to their newness to English. It gives us the conversation starter that gives students the reasons to use their new language. Also, in its brief time in my classroom, it has already been the tool for authentic, original student research. Several students submitted proposals for DNA barcoding research to a citywide competition. One group investigating algae has already used this computer to identify samples they collected.
For many years to come, your donation will grace my classroom and give opportunity to students who came to the United States seeking it. My students' stories are the new immigrant experience in America and they are the future of our country. You are now a part of that story and their ongoing success”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
We'd Flip Over Flip Cameras in Science
Funded Dec 30, 2010I'm sorry I'm getting to this thank you so late. It has been an exceptionally busy school year, and as it draws to a close I've looked back at all of the ways Donorschoose.org has impacted our school. The Flip cameras we received from you earlier this year have taken on a very big role in how the year has progressed, both for students, and for teachers.
The cameras you funded and sent to our school have become a key piece of technology in the classroom. The projects we have used them for include a video montage of students in advisory classes discussing identity, a "talk show" for great world leaders performed by students in their history classes, and for rehearsing portfolio presentations. In science, we are currently using the cameras to record students acting the role of fish mentioned in Old Man and the Sea. As you can see, there have been quite a few opportunities for speaking and listening to English that are all thanks to your donation.
As for teachers, several of my colleagues and I have used the cameras for peer observations of us teaching. Afterwards, we sit down and use the videos to discuss where our lessons are strong or weak, what students are doing, and what we can do to improve. Before the videos, these conversations were never as rich or as productive.
With only a few days left on our teaching calendar before my students take state exams, I've reflected about the associated stress, and how inauthentic a task they are being asked to do by taking three 4-hour tests in a week. Contrasting this with all the great work we've done during the year, especially that done with your donation, is something I would like to see the policy-makers behind these exams stop even for a minute to consider. You understand that education is about students being given opportunities to be successful, and not about poorly conceived tests to make them question their own self-worth. Please continue to be an advocate for children, through this site, or by other means. It has meant so much to my students this year, and next year there will be even more who can benefit from wonderful folks like you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
This classroom project was brought to life by American Express Members Project and 5 other donors.Cameras For Learning Science And English
Funded Dec 24, 2010In the few months since your donated cameras first arrived at my classroom they have significantly changed how projects are conducted and how learning happens. Let me start by saying that these cameras have been out and used several times per class each month, and not just by me. My students travel as a class to all of their subjects during the day, and as a result share a team of teachers among them. Our team of instructors has found ways to utilize these cameras in history, English language arts, and our college preparation class in addition to science.
In my science class, we have used the cameras to document our lab activities in a way we never before had available to us. Students are using the cameras to record the steps of our DNA extraction lab, and will soon use them to photograph model ecosystems based on Old Man and the Sea. In history and humanities, students have used the cameras for everything from essays about identity to student produced talk shows where they play and interview world leaders of the past.
One of the most meaningful projects these cameras were used for was something my students previously had little experience in - college. In a recent college visit, students used these cameras to do a photographic scavenger hunt for elements of college living such as food, dorm life, and studying. When we returned to school we had over 300 pictures to choose from as we created presentations about life in college. Students who couldn't say the first thing about what or why happens at a college were using the pictures from these cameras to explain what they saw and liked or didn't like about the campus we visited. Very directly these cameras played a large part in getting kids interested in continuing their education after high school and helped set their sights higher for what they can do and can be.
Your donation has been quickly put to good use and I am sure will continue to be used frequently in the weeks and years to come. Thank you again for making such a big difference in how I can teach and how my kids can learn.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Wolf
This classroom project was brought to life by American Express Members Project and 5 other donors.