Past projects 35
Sharpening Our Bright Minds in 5th Grade Science
Funded Jan 28, 2024Thank you for doing so much to support our learning in 5th grade science. The kids were super excited to have an electric pencil sharpener again and even assigned pencil sharpening as a job to protect the new sharpener. I was excited to see the kids take responsibility for the materials in the room as well!
We've been busy reviewing for the end of year state science test while at the same time learning lots of new content. Making our foldable notes and doing other assignments on colorful paper has added a pop of excitement to what might otherwise be a tedious task. The color is also helping students organize their notes so they can easily go back and find what they need.
Again, thank you so much for supporting my class. We appreciate you tremendously!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
This classroom project was brought to life by Jimmie Johnson Foundation and 2 other donors.In Our Cross-Curricular Era: Literacy in Science
Funded Apr 18, 2024Wow! Thank you for your help as we come down the home stretch of this school year. My students have been working hard toward their goals and gaining the independence they’ll need to be successful next year in middle school. We really appreciate your support and hope you have a wonderful summer.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
This classroom project was brought to life by Power for Good Foundation and one other donor.Not Today, Germs!
Funded Feb 12, 2024Thanks to your generosity, we're keeping as clean and healthy as we can! Our huge supply of Clorox wipes means we're able to clean desktops after every block, making sure our surfaces are germ-free. Having plenty of hand sanitizer allows us to clean our hands several times per day, practicing great hygiene. And now that the pollen is exploding here, we're very thankful for all those tissues.
While cleaning supplies and tissues may not seem like the most exciting gift we can give a bunch of 5th graders, the kids were super excited to help carry, distribute, and store those supplies. I don't even have to remind my students to clean up at the end of each class. They clean up enthusiastically and help each other remember to take care of our shared spaces.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
This classroom project was brought to life by Jimmie Johnson Foundation and one other donor.Making Learning Ear-resistable!
Funded Nov 22, 2023Thank you so much for helping to provide the resources we needed in our classroom for all of my learners to be successful! We are using the headphones every day as we learn new content and review what we've learned previously. This gives my struggling readers and multi-lingual learners such a feeling of independence, as they can access text and understand the content much more easily with audio support.
My multi-lingual students are having too much fun finding all of the things we're learning in the Spanish-English Picture Dictionaries. They're so comprehensive!! Virtually everything we've been learning about in our Weather unit is featured in the book, with color diagrams and English and Spanish labels. I'm excited to continue to use these books going forward to help my student build their vocabulary.
Thank you again for your generosity. We're having a great year in science and you have certainly contributed to our success.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
Interacting With Content Through Interactive Notebooks
Funded Nov 13, 2023We're halfway through the school year and already my students are digging into their "Volume 2" science notebooks! They are doing an amazing job learning to take their own notes - bubble maps, circle maps, tree maps, two- and three-column notes, doodle notes, and lots and lots of diagrams!
Having paper to create foldables and glue and tape for creating these three-dimensional representations of what we've learned, has been amazing! With more than 30 kids in a class, we certainly go through those consumable supplies! The kids have also enjoyed adding color to their notes with the flair pens!
Creating their own notes and diagrams has been instrumental for building understanding of what we're learning in class, and it's been such a relief knowing we have plenty of supplies to make our notebooks really dynamic!
Thank you again for supporting my kids!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
Good Morning, Brains!
Funded Sep 29, 2023My students are having the best time challenging their brains with all of the learning games we got through this project. They're laughing hysterically as they complete Mad Libs puzzles and learning their multiplication facts as they play math card games. Their favorite BY FAR are the logic games - the parking lot logic game and the magnetic 3D puzzles.
I love giving them the opportunity to interact with each other and work on their problem solving skills in a way that doesn't require them to do pencil-and-paper work. Thank you for making this possible for my amazing students!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 5 other donors.Interactive Notebooks for the Win!
Funded Jul 28, 2023Just today, I watched as students read the review question given as they entered my class, then flipped through their notebooks to find the work that we had done related to the topic of the question. These kids were using their own notes to help them synthesize an answer to an open-ended question. They are creating their own text for fifth grade science, and in creating the resource, they are retaining so much more of the content.
Thank you for supporting my kids in this work. This project supplied enough notebooks that students will have a new notebook ready and waiting when they fill "volume 1," and many of them are already getting close to filling their first notebook. The kids are incredibly proud of their work and having specific science notebooks give them the organization to find their work and use their work as they learn new concepts.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
Fun with Foldables: Interactive Notebooks in 5th Grade Science
Funded Jul 17, 2023Thank you so much for supporting the amazing work my fifth graders are doing in science. We're more than halfway through the first quarter already and their notebooks are already a treasure trove of information for them to access!
Just today, I watched as kids went back in their notebooks to reference work we did weeks ago as they worked through a problem! My science teacher heart was so proud! Having vibrant, colorful notebooks full of foldables and thinking maps has helped them organize their information already, and attaching the articles and excerpts from texts that we've read further makes their notebooks and true resource for learning.
Again, I am so proud of the hard work my kids are putting in, and I'm so grateful for your support in helping them achieve great things this year!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
Building Meaning through Hands-on Science
Funded May 10, 2023We're three weeks into the new school year and we're off to a great start already! My students come to class every day excited to find out what hands-on exploration we'll be doing that day.
My students really enjoyed exploring materials and experimenting with heat to determine which were insulators and which were conductors. Having giant spoons to help illustrate the concept was incredibly helpful. We've already made tons of anchor charts for the classroom, which will serve as a resource for the kids to use throughout the year.
While our weather unit won't start until late October, we will start graphing the daily temperature next week so we get a good picture of temperature trends based on seasonal changes.
I've already seen the impact on my students' learning. They're using examples from our investigations during class discussions and when we read a science text, they're connecting what they learn back to our hands-on learning. Thank you again for your generosity!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Foundation and 2 other donors.Making Meaning Through Models
Funded Dec 23, 2022We've been making models of plant and animal cells over the past couple of weeks now and it's really helping my students understand how these types of cells are similar and different. At the same time, the kids have been making models of unicellular organisms, making these microscopic organisms come to life as they watch them shrink and harden to make keychains. The best part for me - I've heard them going around the building explaining the structure and function of these cells to other adults! That's a huge WIN in my book!
This coming week, we'll be using the pony beads to model a water molecule's trip through the water cycle. This afternoon we're building hovercraft using the bottle tops and old CDs! Creating models has been a fun and creative way to review for the end of grade test.
Again, thank you so much for supporting my students. They're having a great year in 5th grade because of your generosity!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Lalli