Past projects 43
Microscopes for Young Scientists
Funded Nov 26, 2024Thank you so much for the gift of the microscopes for my students. We have been using them on and off since they arrived. Kids have inspected living creatures--the water bears that they are so curious about--as well as the fixed slides that came with the microscopes, including both animal and plant parts. The microscopes give them a new perspective on the unseen details of ordinary things.
Each Friday we have choice time in our class, and microscopes are always an option. That way, kids can explore whatever they want even if it has no connection to our other studies.
We will also be making the microscopes available to lend to other classes so that everyone in our school can benefit from your generous gift. Thank you!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Let's Learn English! ¡Aprendamos Inglés!
Funded Aug 10, 2023I apologize for the delay in thanking you for the ESL materials you donated at the beginning of this school year! I will be honest--these materials turned out to be too advanced for my newcomers, who all arrived in the U.S. last winter. I had optimistically anticipated a higher level of English that would allow them to access activities like constructing sentences, learning about prepositions, and so on. As it turned out, the six migrant students I had in the fall, and the three remaining in my class now, were really still at a very, very beginning stage of learning basic English, and not ready yet for these materials. Most had not learned to read and write in Spanish, which created another challenge for all of us.
Only now in the spring have they developed the knowledge and confidence to approach working with the materials that you donated. They especially enjoy practicing with the "Daily Vocabulary" game, which includes words related to the community and home, like post office, airport, and kitchen. They love that they can write and draw with dry-erase markers on the materials to really engage with the work.
I will most likely have these students again next year as fourth graders, and I look forward to exploring the materials further as they gradually gain more English skills. Thank you so much for your generous donation!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Budding Writers Need Spelling Dictionaries!
Funded Aug 8, 2023Thank you so much for the gift of these spelling dictionaries! My third graders have been using them very frequently, especially for editing their written work. They are currently finishing up with personal narratives, and have used the dictionaries to correct their spelling in stories about everything from a trip to meet a grandfather in Nepal, to digging a hole in the sand on Coney Island.
In addition to finding the words that they need for their stories, the kids notice and use the section about spelling rules, and they enjoy the fun facts about things like the longest word in the English language. They are learning about alphabetization and syllables, as well.
Once again, thank you for these dictionaries, which my students will use throughout this year and into the future.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Atlases to Find Our Place in the World
Funded Sep 14, 2020Thank you so much for the gift of National Geographic World Atlases for all of our fourth grade students! We will be using these atlases throughout the spring to learn map skills, like identifying capitals, understanding borders, and grasping scale. We will also investigate the geography of places that are home to America's immigrants and forced migrants. Of course, that includes the whole world, but we will be focusing on certain places like the west coast of Africa, the Caribbean (where many of my students have ancestry), and countries in Europe and Asia that have sent many immigrants to America in the past couple of centuries. Based on past experience, I am certain that my students will be highly engaged in these activities. It will also be wonderful for them to be able to look at a big, colorful atlas that isn't on a screen, and write their own notes on it. Thank you so much for this incredibly helpful gift!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Boxes for Safe, Sanitary School Supplies
Funded Aug 23, 2020Thank you so much for the gift of these boxes for my students! This school year feels so strange for our kids. The ones who come to school in person are so happy to be there, yet they feel uncomfortable at the same time. They wear their masks all day, sit far apart from each other, and don't get to leave the room to go to other classes and lunch. One thing they have really enjoyed is having these individual boxes for their supplies.
At our school, kids usually share almost all of their everyday supplies. This year, each kid has gotten to decorate the sturdy wooden boxes that you helped to fund. Kids have taken full advantage of this by decorating the boxes in their own personal style. They look for their boxes first thing, and use them throughout the day.
I think these boxes are helping kids feel a bit more at home, at school, during this very unusual year. We are hoping that all of our kids will be able to come to school in person at some point, and you have funded enough for all of them. Thank you!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Atlases to Find Our Place in the World
Funded Jul 6, 2018Thank you so much for the gift of these atlases! We have been using them frequently through the fall so far, and will continue to do so throughout the school year. We have two main purposes in our atlas work. One is to begin to learn the conventions of maps alongside a better knowledge of basic terms. For example, most 4th graders don't yet have a firm concept of what a "country" is, as opposed to a continent, state, etc. My students now understand the differences among these terms and can point out countries, continents, and so on, on the atlases. They also understand and can find capital cities.
Our second focus with the atlases is to connect them to the content of our curriculum on colonization and immigration. We have focused in on the map of Europe to get to know the countries responsible for the Age of Exploration. And we have been looking at countries that were once colonies, and beginning to notice the geographical patterns of colonization. Along the way, many students have found places that they or their family members come from--everywhere from Yemen to China to Argentina to the Dominican Republic, and beyond.
The kids really love working with the atlases and are always excited when it's an "atlas day" in social studies. There is something very special and important about maps. Thank you so much for this wonderful gift!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Let's Take a Time Machine to New Netherland
Funded Jul 27, 2018Thank you so much for funding our 4th grade trip to the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum! We went today. We had a wonderful time and the kids learned so much. First, we observed the many tools and objects in the house to figure out what kinds of chores the Wyckoffs had to do back in the 1600s. For example, we saw a spinning wheel, a candle dryer, a yoke for carrying water, a Dutch oven, a meat tenderizer, and more. We learned that 13 people lived in one room all together! Then the kids got to touch and examine several other artifacts, like a lantern, wooden clogs, and a butter churn. Finally, we got to try out a whole variety of Dutch colonial games and toys on the lawn. The whole experience really brought the Dutch colonial era to life for our class and served as a great kickoff for our study of New Netherland. Thank you so much!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Representation Is Powerful
Funded Nov 30, 2016Thank you so much for funding this project! It has been wonderful to see my students respond to these diverse texts over the course of the year. When it comes to racial and ethnic diversity, many students chose chapter books that reflected their own backgrounds or the backgrounds of their classmates. This connection helped engage them in reading in new ways.
Another very important use for these books this year was in a big project we did about the Disability Rights Movement. Together, we investigated different disabilities and the experiences that disabled people have. We learned about their amazing and inspiring efforts to gain equality in access to education, jobs, and public accommodations. We even performed two plays about the Disability Rights Movement during our school's annual Martin Luther King Day presentation. During the course of this work, we used many of the books from this grant that pertain to disabilities. It was moving to see students self-identify, without shame, as having disabilities like ADHD. They were able to relate to the ideas and characters in these books, and explain their experiences to their classmates.
Thank you again for these books. They have had a wonderful impact on my current students and will surely do so with my future students as well.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Kids Experience Immigration and Labor History at the Tenement Museum
Funded Sep 15, 2016Thank you so much for funding our trip to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The trip was amazing and became an essential part of both our social studies and writing curricula. Since photos are not allowed in the museum, I photographed the students afterward with the paper flowers they made as part of the "Sweatshop Workers" program. They learned about how immigrants living in tenements around the turn of the century often did work at home with the whole family--in this case, making thousands of artificial flowers for very low pay. The students considered what it would be like to stay home all day doing repetitive work like this, and it gave them real insight into daily life back then.
In addition to that activity, we also toured two apartments at the Tenement Museum--the Levines' and the Rogarshevskys'. In both cases, we learned how jam-packed these apartments were--especially the Rogarshevskys', where the three sons set up packing crates on the floor each night and slept with their heads on the sofa and bodies on the crates. We saw real furnishings and household items, and we also got to see parts of the apartments that were not restored, so we understood how the tenements had fallen apart after tenants moved out.
After the trip, the students used many details that they had learned and experienced in the historical fiction pieces they are currently writing. Visiting the Tenement Museum felt like going back in time and allowed the students to bring real life into their stories about the past. This trip is a truly unique experience that we were able to have because of your generosity. Thank you so much!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman
Picture Books for Literacy Learning and Community Building
Funded Oct 25, 2015Thank you so much for your generous gift of picture books for my class! We have been reading these books ever since they arrived and still have more to explore. Students often choose picture books to read when they have free time, and I have also read aloud many of them as part of our social studies and literacy curricula. I'll give a few examples.
This winter we did a big project about the Japanese American internment camps during World War II, as part of the social justice focus of our school. A big piece of this work came from the book "The Children of Topaz," which was part of the grant. This book is based on a diary kept by a third grade class at the Topaz internment camp in Utah. Diary pages are reproduced and explained in the book. My students found this extremely engaging and relatable. In fact, along with learning about the camps, it inspired them to start our own daily class diary, which is still going strong four months later.
Another book that I used recently is "The Butterfly," by Patricia Polacco. This book tells the true story of a French family who hid Jews from the Nazis. Students used this book to learn how to keep track of a complicated plot in an unfamiliar setting--but more than just learning this important literacy skill, they benefited from the well-written story and beautiful illustrations.
One more book that we've read as a class is "An Angel for Solomon Singer." This story helped students make inferences and predictions, again within the context of an original and interesting book.
These are just a few examples of how we've put your donation to work. Thank you again!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Sicherman