Past projects 6
Flexing Our Vocabulary Muscles and Creating Wonderful Words With Scrabble
Funded Dec 2, 2020Thank you so much for funding our project. Since Scrabble was not available, we purchased beautiful Chess-Checkers-Othello (3 in 1 sets) for our students. Our students learned how to play chess this year in a special virtual program and I know they will continue to grow their strategy and critical thinking skills thanks to you.
I am retiring July 1st after 30 years as a New York City public school educator and grateful to Donor's Choose and generous folks like you for supporting my students and our efforts. The world is better and brighter because of people like you.
A million thanks on behalf of my students and myself. Have a beautiful summer!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Davis
This classroom project was brought to life by FamilyAlbum and 10 other donors.Home of the Brave Readers
Funded Sep 16, 2020We are very grateful for your kind and generous donations of "Home of the Brave" which will be an integral part of our reading workshop unit, "Interpretation Book Clubs: Analyzing Themes."
We will begin our deep dive into
Interpretation book clubs and "Home of the Brave" in a couple of weeks. The big ideas and enduring understanding of this special unit:
1. Thinking critically about text(s) can help me gain new understanding about themes.
2. Responding to reading orally and in writing helps to extend my understanding of text.
3. Listening to the ideas of others allows me to uncover new ideas I didn't consider.
"Home of the Brave" is a powerful multi-cultural novel of an African immigrant boy's journey of hardship and hope. Thanks to you, these books have been distributed to our students, they will begin a shared reading shortly and will do all of their work which will help them grow as readers, writers and thinkers in a virtual setting. All 31 of my fab fifth graders are learning from home and these beautiful books written in a series of first person poems filled with positive messages of love, resilience and hope are needed now more than ever!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Davis
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose 20th Anniversary Fund and 9 other donors.Rocking Our Virtual Reading and Writing Workshops
Funded Aug 31, 2020Happy New Year! We are very grateful for our copies of "Front Desk." As you may not know, our school is very focused on providing a variety of multi-cultural literature to our students and this is such a beautiful story filled with important themes including perseverance, racism, social justice, teamwork, hard work, gratitude, family and friendship. We just started reading it together but the kids already LOVE it! In fact, a few could not wait and have already finished it!
We are discussing the story in reading partnerships which we accomplish in virtual breakout rooms in Google classroom. You would be very impressed by the high level book conversations our students participate in. They love sharing their smart thinking and piggybacking off the ideas of their classmates. Here's a personal thank you message from our student, Sujana:
"Thank you for the book! I loved reading it. It was so realistic and diverse. Those were my two favorite things about the book. I also loved the main character Mia. Thank you again for the book!"”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Davis
The Power of One: Harnessing the Wind & Our Imaginations
Funded Aug 13, 2019Wow! The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Young Reader's edition) is an integral part of our enrichment literacy unit which evolved after students explored renewable energy in science. Students have begun to engage in dialogue and discourse during Socratic Seminars formulating their own high order questions in a forum where they explore important story elements & structure, character analysis and identify important themes.
Students were first introduced to William Kamkwamba, the remarkable and perseverant young hero who overcame all odds growing up in a smalll African impoverished village by building wind turbines & generators to help provide power and clean water to his community in the picture book version of the story. Shortly after, they wrote their own poems about wind turbines and wind energy. They designed and built their own turbines during science class. Now, after researching modern renewable energy resources and other technologies that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our fab fourth graders are now writing persuasive essays on which renewable energy resource they think is the best solution and explaining why global citizens and government should implement to help create a healthy and sustainable climate on planet earth.
As one of our students, James noted, "William saved his village in Malawi with his windmills and a bit of perseverance. We are learning so much about William and his life in this powerful memoir. Thank you for sending us these amazing books!"
By learning so much about following your dreams through William's life journey, I know our kiddos are inspired to create their own magic by doing their parts in making our local and global communities better and brighter.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Davis
This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 4 other donors.Kids Change the World With Social Issues Book Clubs
Funded Aug 22, 2018During this holiday season, we are deeply grateful to you for your kind donation of our Carl Hiassen book club books, "Hoot," "Scat," "Flush" and "Chomp." These books are all about kids who are dedicated to helping the environment and helping save endangered species. Students have been engaged in book conversations where they are deepening their understanding of texts by exploring important ideas and themes, interpreting figurative language & symbols and focusing on how and why characters change. Their confidence improves by having the opportunity to discuss books, make connections to other texts, their own lives and to the world in which they live in. By engaging in book club conversations, they take turns speaking, sharing their notices and wonderings and enjoying great children's literature. After their book chats, they have to reflect on how their own thinking was confirmed or changed by their conversations. It's all exciting work which would not be possible without all of you. My students and i wish you and your loved ones a beautiful holiday season and again, many thanks for your generosity.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Davis
This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 6 other donors.Affirming Our Personal Identities With House on Mango Street
Funded Aug 14, 2018A million thanks to you on behalf of my fab fifth graders for your kind and generous donation of a class set of "House on Mango Street."
We have been using this beautiful book as a mentor text to teach us many valuable life lessons including the importance of developing a sense of personal identity, pride in our heritage and how to incorporate beautiful, descriptive and figurative language into our own writing.
In fact, the pictures show you the children at work writing and sharing their own "Name" stories after reading the vignette in "Mango Street." They also created their own bio poems as part of this special personal identity unit in which this text was an integral part of. We included a couple of sample bio poems, too.
We are finishing Mango Street this week and the kids will write literary essays based on the text in which they will explore an important theme-life message that is evident in the book. There are several--including the circle of life, perseverance, hope and independence. It's sophisticated and important work that is made possible thanks to your incredible donation and support.
Thanks again for this wonderful opportunity. I know my students won't forget this special book--thanks to all of you.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Davis