Past projects 10
High Quality Books to Reach All Learners
Funded Jan 1, 2025What a wonderful way to start the new year! This morning I received news that our project to bring high quality books to our 3rd graders has been fully funded. In a few days the books will arrive and students will begin to enjoy them! This is a project that will not just benefit this year’s students but hundreds of students, over the lifetime of the books. Thank you for making this possible.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 14 other donors.Furnish a School Library
Funded Aug 21, 2022Thank you for creating an inspiring space for reading at KIPP Promesa Prep. The students are starting to make visits to their new school library where they can hear stories read aloud and choose books that catch their interest. They are also giving me detailed suggestions of additional books they'd like to see on our shelves. I'm taking notes!
They know that the beautiful library furniture was made possible by you: our generous donors. Thank you for the love you've shown to our students and for believing in the power of reading. Our readers will become our next leaders and we thank you for being in their corner and helping to provide rich literary experiences during their elementary years.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by Bill Gates and 47 other donors.Hands-on Literacy
Funded Sep 24, 2021I am overjoyed to share some long-awaited news with you. Our school, KIPP Promesa Prep, has finally moved into its permanent home: a beautiful, two-story school building in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Since our founding we've been in rented spaces, and the last 5 years we've operated between split sites. Finally all our students are under one roof and our school community feels as strong as ever.
Thanks you for supporting our project for more hands-on, tactile resources for literacy skills. I've started meeting with our students who have the greatest need for literacy support and they were engaged and motivated by the new ways of learning. In fact, one student now asks me every time I see her in the hall if we're meeting again today. Having these joyful activities that students come back to again and again is so powerful for getting the repetitions required to master something like letter names and sounds.
Thank for bringing more joy and learning to our young scholars!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community and 7 other donors.Promesa's Book Shop Experience
Funded Jun 11, 2021This past week was Spirit Week for our students and Wednesday was a celebration of literacy. Students and teachers dressed up as favorite book characters and all 20 classrooms had a chance to choose a book or two of interest at the "book shop." We know that having a home library is correlated with stronger literacy outcomes and your donation helped build the home libraries of over 500 students this week.
We want to say thank you! The students wrote you letters to express how excited they are about their new books. We also took hundreds of photos and although you can only see their eyes (due to masks), I think their joy shines through. One student said as he left the book shop with his class, "This was the greatest day!" Events like this are so memorable for students and this particular event helped our students see that books are appealing, diverse, and accessible.
Lastly, I'll share a favorite quote from James Baldwin: "You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." We think our students will see themselves in the books they read, that they will see into other worlds they've never experienced, and that they can feel more seen, less alone, and more connected with others.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by News Corp and 16 other donors.Journalism Club Develops Curious Leaders
Funded Dec 2, 2020Thank you for contributing to our project to bring very official journalism supplies to our young scholars. They were overjoyed to see their new pens, journals, and notebooks they would be using for their reporting.
The journalism club has been a very bright spot in a very uncertain and strange year. The students use the time as a creative outlet and a place for their voices to be heard. Now that we have published several digital editions of our "Promesa Times" and one print edition, they feel like genuine journalists and are looking forward to their next reports. One thing I love most about this club is how the students have taken ownership of it. They tell us exactly what they want to do: this coming Monday we're reporting on significant women in our lives in honor of Women's History Month, and idea that came from Sugey in 3rd grade.
Another highlight of the club was having two of our journalists receive a national award (including $100 prize) for their letters to the president, detailing what they would like to see from their leaders. These same students were later interviewed by the LA Times.
Thank you for believing in our students and giving them opportunities to see themselves in a new way and bring their voices to a larger audience.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by FamilyAlbum and 8 other donors.Graphic Novels for Young Journalists
Funded Dec 2, 2020Thank you for contributing to our project to bring graphic novels to the journalism club. I wish you had been on our Zoom call when we revealed the book options and they got to "shop" for the book they'd most like to read. Seeing their excitement and gratitude for a new book was so rewarding.
The journalism club has been a very bright spot in a very uncertain and strange year. The students use the time as a creative outlet and a place for their voices to be heard. Now that we have published several digital editions of our "Promesa Times" and one print edition, they feel like genuine journalists and are looking forward to our next print edition. They've suggested we should include comics next time so we will use the graphic novels for inspiration into how to tell a story frame-by-frame.
Thank you for believing in our students and giving them opportunities to see themselves in a new way and bring their voices to the larger world.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by FamilyAlbum and 6 other donors.High Interest Texts for All Readers
Funded May 5, 2020I wish you could've been there! Although schools are closed, our campus continues to provide meals for children in the community. During our meal distribution day last Thursday we set up two long tables and completely covered them with the books you provided by your generous donations. Families with limited access to books while libraries and schools are closed were able to grow their at-home libraries and choose books of particular interest to their children. The feeling all around was joyful and grateful. Because we were facilitating social-distanced book shopping, there was at first a substantial line of children and guardians waiting for their turn to look over the books, yet I heard no complaining. I'm very happy to say everyone who came was able to get books and at the end of the day we even had two books leftover! Thank you for fostering a love of literacy. Particularly important, thank you for saying, "You matter!" to our students and our families.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Drive-In and 14 other donors.Coding and Robotics for Primary Grades
Funded Nov 15, 2019The professional development at the Johnson Space Center in Houston was incredible. We were so fortunate to be in a small group of educators-just 6 of us-so we were able to ask lots of questions and be very hands-on. We are so excited to bring Lego engineering opportunities to our youngest thinkers!
Your gift made this possible. Our school club is open to all kindergarten and first graders and now we have the knowledge to lead students through well-designed activities and challenges, that will build their creative thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. Basically, they will be better equipped for any future they choose!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
This classroom project was brought to life by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and 3 other donors.Targeted Small-Group Instruction
Funded Dec 12, 2016Thank you for your generous contributions to our small group instruction! When the kids saw the new whiteboard at our small-group area, they of course wanted to know where it came from! It was very sweet to be able to tell them that someone who cared about our school and our students donated the boards, because they want us to keep learning and loving school. The first grade team has come to rely on our wonderful (and portable) whiteboards for nearly every part of the day. It may be during small group time with a few students working with me at the back table and I use the whiteboard to build a number with base-ten blocks or to engage students in a math talk, where they can see each others' strategies drawn out on the board and explain their thinking. It has been useful in showing a group of students who were ready to add dialogue to their stories, how quotation marks help show their readers where the dialogue is happening. Most often though, we use it during our daily guided reading lessons. This is such a vital part of our students' balanced literacy instruction and allowed them to practice with a text just beyond their independent level with support from a teacher to highlight and explain new vocabulary or text features. And it's so often that I turn to the whiteboard to help them see exactly what we're talking about. I also love that I can display their strategy cards or sentence starters because the board is magnetic. Those tools gives them just the right amount of help to build their stamina for their challenging texts. In short, thank you! Thanks for caring for these amazing kids who love to learn and come to school eager to take on whatever challenges are around the corner.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo
First-Ever First Grade Robotics Team
Funded Jul 15, 2016Dear Donors,
Thank you for your generous donation for the first-ever first grade robotics team at KIPP Promesa. The interest in the team far exceeded our expectations and we are already looking forward to how we will be able to expand for next year. Students have been so motivated and excited by the new technology. The morning of our second team meeting, Ian arrived to school hopping up and down. His mom explained that he hadn't stopped talking about robotics. It was the first thing he mentioned when he woke up in the morning.
For one of our new students to the school the transition to first grade had been challenging. We at the school had been working closely with parents to support him and make sure he had what he needed. Part of his difficulty was social/emotional challenges. He was the first student to submit his permission slip for the robotics team, begging his mom to come in to the school early so they could drop it off. Being part of the team has required a lot from him in terms of working as part of team, explaining his thinking, and sharing responsibility for tasks. He has risen to the challenge in a remarkable way. His Spanish and Dance teachers at the school have both stopped me to tell me what a huge improvement he has made. We can't assume that robotics was the full answer to his challenges, but there's also little doubt that it gave him opportunity to stretch and apply his developing social and academic skills.
We are also really proud to have a gender-balanced team, especially considering the gender imbalance that currently exists in the computer science field. Students are divided into sub-teams of 4-5 in order to complete challenges. They take turns stepping up to take a lead role and are expected to contribute their ideas at all steps of the process. They are currently working on their 3rd of 5 challenges for the Wonder Workshop competition. When they complete those we will continue to use robotics in our classroom as a opportunity for creative play/exploration and also to enrich the general curriculum.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Ngo