Past projects 25
Posting Projects to Promote Pride and Proficiency!
Funded Sep 20, 2023Thank you so very much for your donations to this project. As you can see from the photos, the students have been using both the card stock and the resources I purchased with your TPT gift card to show their learning and express their creativity. Your donations have also helped us to create an engaging classroom with colorful bulletin boards which spotlight the students' work on our bulletin boards.
The students have enjoyed working on many projects with the materials funded by your donations. For Hispanic Heritage Month, we studied about several people who made wonderful contributions to their communities and to the world, and then each student chose one of those people to illustrate by using a color legend. Another project was when they created a book with writing, diagrams, and illustrations showing what they learned about five of our body systems. They loved learning about the workings of the human body and making the book! Some of the other photos show an activity they used to practice their consonant blend phonics skills. I am very excited about something I just purchased with the TPT gift card last week. It is a collection of writing templates which include informative, narrative, and opinion templates with word banks. For each prompt there are three different templates with varying degrees of support so each student can get what they need to develop their writing skills.
Your kindness and generosity are reaching each of these students and helping them learn, create, and develop the skills they need to not only be successful this school year, but also to set a foundation for success in future grades. Thank you so much for caring for our classroom!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 2 other donors.Optimizing Organization to Encourage Engagement and Efficiency!
Funded Apr 6, 2023Thank you so much! I truly appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity! My students are benefiting from your kindness!
As you can see from the photos, the students are enjoying the extra large vinyl circle stickers at our small group round table. Not only are the colorful circles a great way to quickly assist the students in finding a place to sit and set up their materials, they are also an engaging way to use dry erase markers to play and practice new sounds, spellings, and words. Even when not in use by students, the circles add color to an otherwise blah work area and because of that, it is kept neat and tidy.
The photos also show just one of the ways we have been using the mesh pouches with colored zippers. Our students are fortunate enough to have some good quality headphones to use with their iPads instead of the little earbud like headsets. They store them in their desks so they can quickly pull them out and set up their tablets for learning, but since their desks are small, they are pretty crowded and I have been worried about the wires getting tangled up and stretched out. These pouches are just the thing for providing a safe home for the headphones so their desks stay organized and so they can prolong the life of the headsets.
The donations you made also provided each student with a pastel colored highlighter which they were so excited to use instead of their yellow and orange crayons! They use these to highlight spelling patterns and sight words in their decodable readers to help them with decoding and reading.
None of the amazing things described above would have been possible without you! Thank you for looking for a way to help these young and grateful learners!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by LOFT and 2 other donors.Pop-Its Promote Proficiency
Funded Sep 21, 2022Thank you, thank you, thank you donors! I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity! My students are benefiting from your kindness!
As you can see from the photos, the students have really been giving their pop-its a workout as they use them to separate sounds in words in order to correctly spell what they want to say by matching the proper spelling for each sound they separate. Not only that, they have also enjoyed using them to both add and subtract as they work on committing their basic math facts to memory. Every task is more fun when a pop-it is involved!
The photos also show just a few of the ways I have used the Teachers Pay Teachers gift card your funds purchased for our class. We often refer to the Bump It Up bulletin board to encourage everyone to write more extended sentences with conjunctions, details, adjectives, prepositions, clauses, etc. Whether it is a cute holiday writing project, or a St. Patrick's Day Color by Sum or Difference math worksheet, the students enjoy using their pop-its to sound out words, count on when adding, or count back as they find the difference.
We are almost to the point where the students will use the Play Dough. They will use it as a base while they apply what they have learned in our life cycle science unit to construct a model by adding items to act as a structure to defend and protect the soft animal body (Play Dough) from its prey. The students are so excited for this project and to be able to select which color Play Dough they would like to use and then keep!
None of the amazing things described above would have been possible without you! Thank you for looking for a way to assist this generation of learners and then acting on your kindhearted thoughts by donating to our class! Thank you for investing in these students and their future!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 3 other donors.Getting the "Write Start" to a New Year!
Funded Sep 20, 2022I want to thank you so very much for your very generous donations to our classroom. The students were so excited as I showed them each of the materials when they arrived. Their excitement only grew as we started to use the different supplies.
Instead of writing on boring old lined beige newspaper type paper, my students couldn't wait to write in their new journals with colorful covers and bright white pages with colored lines and a space for drawing a picture. The way the journal is set up with a variety of prompts for the three writing genres is so very helpful, and the engaging prompts with picture cues and/or word banks hold their interest with each new opportunity to write. Since the journal is new, clean, and pretty, the students are more motivated to write neatly and write more!
The Tap & Write dry erase cards are perfect for small group work. Again, the colorful images are motivating and there is often some student-created competition to get their word filled in correctly and to do it more quickly than the others in their small group. These cards are proving to be a great support for students who continue to work on separating sounds in words and representing each of those sounds with the proper spelling. The rainbow edged clear sheet protectors add color and organization to our displays of student work, and give the students a sense of pride to have their work framed and posted for others to see. The vinyl stickers have been a great way to motivate and reward participation in class and give the students a choice when being acknowledged for their good work. They love to put the cute stickers on their folders or water bottles and enjoy showing each other what stickers they earned and why they picked them.
So, once again, please accept my gratitude for helping keep my students motivated, engaged in their learning, and proud of their accomplishments!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 2 other donors.It's TIME for Math!
Funded Nov 10, 2021My students and I are so very grateful for your generous donation towards our "It's Time for Math" project! You can see from the photos, even though we are all wearing masks, we were so excited to receive the packages and even more excited to open them and start using what was inside.
As I mentioned in my project write up, learning to tell time on an analog clock can be quite challenging for these young scholars. These hand-held brightly colored analog clocks have been instrumental in making it so clear that the minute hand has to complete a turn around the face in order for the hour hand to move and change the time.
Although there are no photos of the students using the counters, they use those all the time to master patterns, addition, subtraction, greater/lesser than, and so many more important first grade math skills. The small ziplock bags have been very helpful in keeping their counters, and other manipulatives organized.
So far my students have used the colorful foam geometric pattern blocks to become acquainted with congruent shapes, and to explore their imaginations as they design and build larger shapes which assists them with their engineering skills!
Your thoughtful funding of our project will continue to impact the learning of these fortunate students as well as many students in my future classes.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by General Motors and 4 other donors.Hands Off Our Hands-On Tools
Funded Nov 10, 2021Thank you so very much for funding this project for hands-on learning tools for my students. I think even with their masks on, you can see how engaged and happy they are to use these manipulatives to explore and learn.
The "ones" from the place value sets have doubled their impact because not only have they used them as tens and ones, they have also been using them to understand the proper way to measure length with centimeter cubes with "no gaps, and no overlaps!"
As evidenced by the photos, the gift of the linker cubes are another tool the students have been using to understand the concept of groups of five, tens, and individual ones to represent numbers, add double digit numbers, and subtract them as well. The concept of regrouping to master these skills is imperative to these young scholars' understanding of place value.
Some of the original items I ordered were no longer available at the time of shipment so as replacements, I was able to obtain small containers of Play Dough for all the students as well as stickers. The students used the Play Dough to make models of the structures of animals that would be able to withstand attacks by their prey which helped to increase their understanding of the need to use structures to defend to survive. The colorful stickers with cute sayings have been a great motivator for good work habits as they know they will be able to choose a sticker when they exhibit perseverance and determination.
Thank you again and again for your generosity and kindness!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by General Motors and 3 other donors.The "Write" Start to a New Year!
Funded Sep 16, 2021Once again, I want to thank you for your generosity. Your donations toward our Write Start project have given my students so much to be excited about! To begin with, they were very happy to receive the delivered packages. Even with their masks on, I could see their smiles and the excitement in their eyes! Once they took turns opening the boxes, their enthusiasm grew and grew.
My students love using the Draw & Write Journals because they are so colorful and they look and feel like a "real" book. We save this journal for opportunities for them to write about themselves, their experiences, and their feelings. They are becoming better writers as they have the chance to write to express instead of only to write to fulfill an assignment. Their social/emotional growth is also apparent as they use the multicultural crayons to depict themselves as they see themselves and and then share their work aloud with others.
The scissors and crayon boxes have been such a great organizational tool. Instead of keeping their crayons in the original cardboard box that starts to fall apart within weeks, they get to use these hard plastic boxes to store their crayons. The crayons are lasting much longer, and it is so much easier for them to find the color they want, and then to return it when they are finished.
Your kindness and donations have helped me to give my students supplies to not only excite them, but also to help them increase their writing skills, their organizational skills, and their self esteem. Those are truly wonderful gifts!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by Clorox and one other donor.Making a Comeback to In-Person Learning
Funded Mar 31, 2021Thank you so much for donating to help make our classroom a safe and comfortable place to learn! My students who, with their families, decided they wanted to return to school for the end of the year to be with their teacher and some of their classmates in person, were happy to have the clear desk partitions waiting for them on their desks. Whether they were participating in reading, math, writing, dancing, or other physical activities, they knew they were protected. The screens also allowed me to get closer to them than I would have been able to without the screens. This allowed me to give them more individual and personalized assistance and attention.
Once again, thank you for helping make our transition back into the classroom easier, safer, and more comfortable. I know the students were able to learn better and learn more because of your generosity!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by T-Mobile and one other donor.Ordinary Supplies for Extraordinary Results
Funded Oct 24, 2019Words can hardly express the joy and gratitude my students and I feel for your kind thoughts and actions. As proof please look at their faces, especially in the first photo showing just how excited they were to receive and open packages sent just for them!
Although our class is benefiting from ALL the supplies, including the colored paper and post-it notes which help to brighten up the room and make activities more colorful and fun, and from the sticky poster paper we used a lot when learning our winter concert songs, the stars of the donated items are definitely the highlighters and digital timers!
Who would think something as simple as highlighters could literally brighten up the students' faces and make searching for words with target spelling patterns and sight words so exciting? Now when it is time to work with a new decodable book, instead of groans, I hear cheers. Not only are the students benefiting from using the highlighters to assist them in mastering new sounds and words, all of us are also benefiting by getting more time. Time is what we never have enough of but now that the students are excited about using the highlighters, they get right to work and we have a lot less wasted time!
I forgot to order batteries for the digital timers so after patiently waiting for those to come in, we were able to get the timers up and running. I thought using sand timers was a great motivator to get the students to practice their reading fluency, but I was so pleasantly surprised by how much more motivated they are to read for longer periods of time without losing focus when they get to use the digital timers. They love to set the timer, turn it off when it buzzes, and record their ever-increasing number of words they can read correctly. The students are learning to work well together as partners, increasing their fluency, and learning responsibility for taking care of this small piece of technology. They are very careful to turn them off entirely after each use, so they don't run out of battery power.
Thank you so much for making a difference in the lives and learning of my wonderful and deserving students and for making teaching them more even more rewarding for me!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by An anonymous classroom supporter and 2 other donors.Empowering Students Through Art
Funded Jun 8, 2016Thank you so much for your generosity in giving the funds needed to provide my high energy and highly motivated first graders with the art materials needed to make everyday and extra special projects more exciting.
The students have really taken advantage of the supplies you have provided to make their artwork more alive and more lifelike. Before, we only had small nubs of skin-colored crayons left over in a communal bag. The students now have fresh, full-sized individual boxes of multicultural crayons which they can use to make their self-portraits and other people drawings reflect their wonderful individuality!
You don't know what a joy it is to have our own stack of art and drawing paper right in our own room where we can use it as the need arises instead of having to order it days ahead and sometimes wait for it to be ordered or told that it is not in the school budget.
The students are learning fine motor skills and the new drawing pencils are enhancing that learning. They feel like true artists when we get the special drawing pencils out along with the magic erasers to work on a new piece of fine art.
The new watercolors are a blessing in two ways. For one, they allows us to have sets where all of the colors are true instead of only having sets were only some of the colors are true anymore due to the colors running together into the other cakes. It also allows us to experiment with mixing colors right at the source with the old paints instead of trying to mix colors on paper, since we have new paint sets! What with it being autumn now and having just turned the clocks ahead, the students just used the watercolors last week to illustrate science and how the bare trees look at sunset. The learning and the artistic representations were both truly fabulous!
Thank you again for your generous gift for these deserving children!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Hughes
This classroom project was brought to life by an anonymous donor and 4 other donors.