Past projects 4
Reading About Our World
Funded Aug 25, 2021Thank you for all your generous donations. I can’t wait to use these amazing read alouds to bring to life science and social studies concepts and to inspire my students to read and write to learn about new and interesting things. It’s so nice to see the support.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Samantha Westerfield
Teaching Tools
Funded Mar 24, 2021Thank you so much for your amazing support for my virtual classroom. The virtual setting makes it difficult to break up a routine and to make learning fun and engaging without our peers to play and explore with! Your support has allowed me to purchase resources from other teachers that made our virtual classroom a fun, exciting success.
From math lessons, engaging immediate feedback on assessment, and even magic reveal art, this allowed me to engage my virtual students and my in-person tutoring and enrichment students with fun and exciting activities. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for allowing me to free up time used to create activities so that I could engage with my students in live lessons more often. Thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Samantha Westerfield
Double Screens for Double the Learning
Funded Feb 20, 2021Each week, my students take part in 10-15 live meetings. During those meetings, I am often using a document camera to share materials I have in the classroom or the "share screen" function of Google Meets to share virtual resources. In order to see the faces of my students, I was using a chromebook to see the students, a computer to share resources, a document camera to see the paper materials, and an iPad to keep data. This was a lot to juggle with wiggly first graders on the screen.
Two screens has eliminated the need for extra devices and allowed me to create and share resources infinitely faster. The students have less wait time and there are less issues due to technology. My entire teaching experience is improved with two screens.
The students are especially excited about how easy it is to see their data, their growth, and not need extra people in the call. Overall, having two screens has altered my entire live teaching experience. I am so very thankful!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Samantha Westerfield
This classroom project was brought to life by The Center for Disaster Philanthropy and 2 other donors.Family Foundations
Funded Nov 20, 2020In our classroom, reading is not as simple as choosing a book off the shelf, as my students are 100% virtual. We rely heavily on sharing books via read alouds and digital platforms for free reading.
The books that you provided for my students were specific to our family unit. This allowed me to target students in my classroom's family situations that I felt were underrepresented. Since all of my students are part of military families, these texts describe challenges that only military families face. Additionally, many of the texts chosen depict strong relationships with culture, immigrant families, and people of color. These books bring to life the experiences of my students and demonstrate that others are going through challenges like separation and divorce too. These texts are read aloud so that I can communicate the depth of theses challenges and motivate students to celebrate their own families.
Through these texts, my students are more excited than ever to listen to their read aloud and have so many ideas to write about in their own family books. Thank you for the opportunity for me to connect with my students.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Samantha Westerfield