Ms. Hinton Sainz's Classroom Edit display name

Past projects 19

• Is This Thing On? Recording Voices of English Learners

  Funded May 8, 2019

  We have begun using the headsets in class, and it's fun to watch the students move from embarrassment and hesitation (even refusal!) to willingness and even eagerness to record Flipgrid videos and audio recordings of their voices.

  I have created mini "recording studios" (really mostly privacy barriers) from trifold foamboards cut in half, lined with felt. The students love to have a little nook in which to work.

  It's really just the beginning of our use of this technology, and as we move through the year and the students learn more academic language, students will begin to use the headsets to create screencasts of them doing math work. I want them to do "think-alouds" to practice the content area vocabulary for math and science.

  Thanks once again! The headsets are a wonderful resource!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

  This classroom project was brought to life by Verizon and 9 other donors.

• Cooking for Health and Fun!

  Funded Oct 2, 2018

  I can't thank you enough for helping us start a cooking club at our school. I had planned a few projects, but my ability to fund food-based projects week after week was flagging when we received the gift cards for Safeway/ Albertson's, and the funds really breathed life back into our program. The kids were excited to learn about different foods and then have a good time making and eating their creations.

  I tried to plan each project around some kind of learning goal surrounding cooking or food. For example, before we made holiday appetizers and decorated cookies, students watched a series of videos about holiday foods from around the world, and took notes on these foods that represented global cultures. I felt good about expanding the students' repertoire of snacks as well as their understanding of food, culture and cooking.

  Unfortunately, creating a cooking club has proven much more complicated than we anticipated. Some students were disappointed that we weren't truly "cooking' since our school does not actually have a kitchen, and district policy prohibited it. We had to quickly change our vision of "cooking" and define projects and the techniques we would learn differently. This semester, the name of the club has changed to "Foodie Club" and while we will continue with the food preparation projects, funded by the remaining balance on the gift cards, students will also explore restaurant reviews, nutrition facts and other food-related topics in addition to culture and cooking techniques.

  The students are always happy when we are making and eating fresh food, even when they turn up their noses at some of the ingredients or combinations. We have a wonderful time, and it's a nice break from a lot of the digital learning they do during the rest of the day.

  Thanks again for your generosity.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

  This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Drive-In and one other donor.

• It's the Little (Techy) Things

  Funded Apr 27, 2017

  I apologize it has taken so long to get this letter posted! We have had a few technical difficulties with the microphone adapters, but now we are up and running, and enjoying our new tech tools. The mice have been particularly useful, since we do not have touchscreen laptops, and the trackpads are very small and difficult to use for many applications. The students enjoy playing games such as Kahoot! and using Google Drawings to create Booksnaps, visual annotations of pages from their independent reading books. The mice make it much easier to manipulate the cursor for activities such as this, which makes the use of technology more seamless and inspires more creativity. Thank you so much for those!

  The adapters for the audio input on the laptops have also made it possible to do projects I could not do before. Students have used the microphones on our headsets to record themselves reading the Pledge of Allegiance, both as a pre-assessment and then again once they had it memorized. We have also created screencast videos of the students reading poems that they have written about themselves. Students will benefit greatly from being able to hear themselves speaking in English and seeing the progress they are making.

  Thanks again for your kindness and making a difference for students!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

• Notebooks Interactive!

  Funded Aug 27, 2016

  Thanks again for helping me get my students started with interactive notebooks!

  Organization is a challenge for me, and so I understand how important it is for students to have a reference that they can use to study and make connections to prior learning throughout the year, and yet I have never successfully led students through a consistent process of keeping a binder. I had also hoped that using interactive notebooks would help my students personalize their learning and value their notes more. I have started using an easel with a table of contents for each class's notebook. Because I have 6 different courses for my English Language Learners, this is the most efficient way to communicate with students about what they should have in their notebooks. We have color-coded each notebook so that each class can easily locate notebooks on the shelves, and students often fight over who gets to hand out the notebooks each period.

  I have been providing a variety of notetaking formats, including Cornell Notes and graphic organizers. I have also experimented with using foldables students can attach to the pages. The next frontier is truly using focused notetaking strategies by having students return to their notes to organize and process them multiple times over time to reinforce concepts they are learning. I wish I had learned how to use these strategies when I was this young!

  The students enjoy working in their notebooks. I see them take pride as the pages fill with new concepts and learning as well as a record of their own ideas and reflections. We have even made a project of students designing their own foldables and organizers for topics from our reading.

  Having composition books I can provide for students is a key part of implementing all of this. Most of my students have a hard time purchasing school supplies throughout the year, so having them on hand is key. Thank you for helping me provide this learning experience for them.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

• Books and The Shelves to Store Them!

  Funded Dec 10, 2015

  I wanted to thank you once more for supporting my project to get bookshelves and a set of novels for my English Language Development classroom. The students had noticed how hard it was to keep books on our old wire shelving unit, and laughed at my duct tape hack. My introductory class was super-excited to help in organizing the new shelves. They are eager to learn English and use the classroom library often to choose new reading material.

  My Intermediate Reading group are more reluctant readers Sometimes it is hard to get them excited about anything that involves reading a book. However, even they take pride in a more organized classroom, which contributes to their overall feelings about school. Also, I believe that although adolescents may not recognize or admit it right now, having a learning environment rich in various types of texts with easy access will improve the quality of their education and their attitudes about reading.

  The next step is to comb through the books and discard aging, disintegrating or outdated books and to re-vitalize my library collection with high interest, low lexile books that will grab these developing readers.

  Something as simple as a set of bookshelves is literally and figuratively a foundation we can build upon. Thank you for believing in my students.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

• Maus for Humans

  Funded Dec 10, 2013

  It has been a while since you made your donation, but I want to let you know that we are currently using Maus as part of our unit on Night and Holocaust literature. Elie Wiesel's Night can be a very difficult book, not in terms of reading level, but in terms of the deepening darkness and hopelessness throughout the book. It is difficult for students to truly conceive of the long-term and even intergenerational impact of the Jewish Holocaust. I have supplemented my teaching of that book with the documentary Night and Fog, and also with Maus, by Art Spiegelman. Your donation has made my use of that book possible.

  Students have spent a day learning about the text features of comics, and how the reading processes of comics compare to reading a work of prose or viewing a documentary. As we continue reading Maus, students will continue to reflect on the various techniques and tools that the creators of each have, and how the creators of these three works have tried to help themselves and others grapple with the inconceivable horror of the Holocaust, and to think about why accounts such as these are important. Students are currently beginning their study of World War II in the history classes as well, and I am encouraging them to make connections and to take questions to their history teachers.

  I will send photos and thank-you notes from the students soon. Once again, thank you for your donation.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

  This classroom project was brought to life by Disney and 8 other donors.

• Laptops for Learning (Let's Try This Again!)

  Funded Jan 18, 2011

  People like you amaze me. It is possible that you know me personally, but even if you do, not many people have been inside my classroom or have firsthand knowledge of the teaching and learning that happens there. The generosity of your donation touches me deeply because it means that, even in these difficult times for public education, some people trust us as teachers, and trust our students to make use of the resources they are given to further themselves. The donation you made has purchased a laptop computer that I consider to be the first in a collection that will become a classroom lab of sorts.

  After negotiating a bit of a rocky trail learning how to enter the computer into school inventory so that it could be set up for student use, I introduced the tool to my students casually, bringing it in during class periods where I knew that students would be able to make use of it, such as my creative writing class, where many students are using blogs as part of a self-designed writing project. Every student who has had the privilege of using our newest tool has been delighted. They are so relieved at how quickly it boots up, and they actually like the small "mini" format of the keyboard, trackpad and screen. They have been given something that is several generations ahead of what is available (from time to time) in the school's labs, and I have seen the appreciation on their faces. In the meantime, our librarian and I obtained a $2500 grant from a local education enrichment nonprofit organization to buy a few more laptops for use in the research process for next year.

  Last week, we used the laptop you donated daily during my freshman research project, in which groups created a collaborative annotated bibliography using a web tool called Easybib. Each group that got the "new computer" became excited and took pride in making sure that work was accomplished on it. At the end of the week, I suggested to them that perhaps we could obtain more of these if they were willing to get creative with spreading the word and soliciting donations. They immediately saw the possibilities of having daily access to laptops in class, even with just a few available at first, and were enthusiastic about the possibility of a "marketing" assignment in order to solicit donations.

  Thank you so much for your contribution to my classroom and my students.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

• Drives for Success

  Funded Aug 22, 2009

  I am thrilled to have been able to provide a flash drive to every student who requested one from me, all because of your generous donation. My students have used these flash drives to complete revised essays defining civil discourse and to create video podcasts which teach about important movements in American Literature. In addition, many of my students have reported using the flash drives for projects in other classes.

  My proposal was simple, but with real and important results. I saw more students work as though they were part of a process that built from day-to-day, because they didn't feel that they were starting out new each time they sat at a computer. They learned how to load documents onto and off of the flash drives and to manage their files for a successful project. The flash drives were also used in combination with the digital voice recorders I got from Donorschoose last year as students combined a variety of technological, writing and cooperative skills to complete the podcast assignment.

  I truly hope you will continue to support teacher projects on Donorschoose.org. It is such an important way to get needed resources for our classrooms!

  Thank you!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

  This classroom project was brought to life by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and one other donor.

• Digital Voice Recorders In Reading & Writing Groups

  Funded Mar 1, 2009

  I want to show my appreciation for your donation and to make sure you understand the impact you have had by helping to fund digital voice recorders for my classroom.

  I ended up implementing the use of the recorders during our reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It was the end of the year, and I thought it would be a perfect time to get students into small groups and work on listening and speaking skills through literature discussion groups. Each group used a voice recorder to record their group's discussion, and then I chose a recorder at random and we listened to the discussion as a class. Through peer review, we provided positive, constructive feedback to the group who was chosen. My observation was that because the groups were being recorded, there was a little bit of initial silliness, but ultimately my students felt more accountable to the process of a group discussion. I can't think of any other way that we could hold multiple discussions at the same time and also have that level of accountability and recognition.

  As a teacher in Arizona right now, it is easy to feel like the victim of systems beyond our control, but it is a wonderful feeling to be supported by individuals who clearly value education and believe in what I am trying to accomplish with my students.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Hinton Sainz

  This classroom project was brought to life by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and 9 other donors.