Past projects 10
Chapter Books to Annotate and Keep!
Funded Mar 17, 2025This ambitious project is actually happening because of you. Amazing! The students will love taking pens, pencils, and highlighters to their pages, and this will really help when they write their essays.
I am so grateful for your support. I’m sure that we will create a group of book-smelling bibliophiles by the end of the year. Thanks!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Chapter Books to Annotate and Keep
Funded Nov 13, 2023I am so grateful for your generosity! This is the second reading unit where students have gotten their very own book that they could highlight, underline, annotate, and dog-ear, and they are really using the resource to think deeply about the text.
By annotating the text, students are able to practice the all important skills of noticing and wondering. I often tell families that teaching curiosity is the most important and the most challenging skill I teach in the classroom. By using the terms "notice and wonder" in English Language Arts, science, social studies, and math, students awaken their awareness to their own curiosity and, therefore, strengthen it.
Annotation also helps students to slow down in the text and really process the information. Much of fifth grade is using evidence to form theories and opinions, so having notes directly in the text allows students to refer back to their work efficiently. In other years, we have used post-it notes, but this quickly becomes a mess. Students ideas and books quickly become disorganized. Having their own books, however, allows them to track the information and refer back to it.
Finally, this being their second text they have annotated cover-to-cover. One single page in their books were often completely highlighted in September, but not they are highlighting only the most important information in a text. Their ability to refine their thinking is evident because of the resources with which you provided us.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Books to Annotate and Keep
Funded Nov 9, 2023I am so grateful for your generosity! This is the second reading unit where students have gotten their very own book that they could highlight, underline, annotate, and dog-ear, and they are really using the resource to think deeply about the text.
By annotating the text, students are able to practice the all important skills of noticing and wondering. I often tell families that teaching curiosity is the most important and the most challenging skill I teach in the classroom. By using the terms "notice and wonder" in English Language Arts, science, social studies, and math, students awaken their awareness to their own curiosity and, therefore, strengthen it.
Annotation also helps students to slow down in the text and really process the information. Much of fifth grade is using evidence to form theories and opinions, so having notes directly in the text allows students to refer back to their work efficiently. In other years, we have used post-it notes, but this quickly becomes a mess. Students ideas and books quickly become disorganized. Having their own books, however, allows them to track the information and refer back to it.
Finally, this being their second text they have annotated cover-to-cover. One single page in their books were often completely highlighted in September, but not they are highlighting only the most important information in a text. Their ability to refine their thinking is evident because of the resources with which you provided us.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Chapter Books to Write In
Funded Sep 26, 2023With your support and generosity, our students were able to make their reading much more interactive and meaningful. By having their own copy of our mentor text, students were able to annotate directly in the book--no notebook or stacks and stacks of sticky notes to sort through. This improved not only their reading skills but their writing skills too.
This text, Thunder Rolling in the Mountains, is historical fiction. Students spent weeks reading primary source documents to learn about westward expansion in the U.S. and about the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) lifestyle, beliefs, and values. This novel followed Chief Joseph as his clan was forced from their land, engaged in six bloody battles over three months, and ends with them being moved from what is now Washington State to Oklahoma. The book does not shy away from including native values and traditions, and it does depict the catastrophic loss that the tribe undertook by moving and battling the U.S. government soldiers.
Teaching this history through a lens of literacy took a lot of note-taking and summarizing. By having books that students could annotate, students highlighted character descriptions, asked questions of the text, made notes on the map included in the book, and noted character changes. Their books included highlighting, underlining, note-taking, dog-eared pages, and even an occasional picture.
This work prepared them to write a number of summaries, character studies, and a final essay where students answered the focusing question, "how do beliefs and values guide the two main characters in the book?" By having compiled notes that included dialogue, reader reaction, and vocabulary work, all students were able to write grade-level and above responses in their essays. Also, this work may have had a significant impact on students' test scores. From September to December, the class surpassed more than one full grade level on the Measurement of Academic Progress standardized test (MAP) that many schools, districts, and states study to determine student learning. I believe their work in their very own book helped them to think deeper about the texts they read, even on an online, standardized test.
More than any of the educational jargon and test scores, the kids were excited to read. They were excited to write about their reading. And they were excited to take their books home. This love of reading from all students could not have occurred without your support. Thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
This classroom project was brought to life by The Peterson Family and 5 other donors.Peace and Calm Amidst the Learning Hum
Funded Jan 24, 2022Your generosity has helped me teach in new ways that elevate student independence, collaboration, and quality of work. We opened the box and started using the isolation headphones immediately. This is a lively group that can equally benefit from discussing their work and distract each other from it. The headphones allow the group as a whole to work independently in order to create a greater collective knowledge.
We use the headphones the most in math. In preparing for our standardized testing, students were working independently for greater amounts of time. 5 minutes at the beginning of the year up to 20 minutes by the end. During this independent work time, I meet with striving learners in a small group. This allows them to process verbally as we deepen their understanding. After this independent time, students can work in partners or small groups to check in on their work. Some students continue to work independently.
Reading and writing have similar structures, but we are more often working with partners or book clubs. In all of these subjects, the headphones allow students to isolate sounds and focus on their own internal dialogue. This creates increased metacognition and therefore deeper learning.
Thank you all again for your support!”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Meaningful Learning: Now in Color!
Funded Nov 12, 2021The class and I are grateful for your support with our new color printer. We have used it to help with our social studies learning, with classroom organization, and social/emotional health. Every time I print, I am flooded with gratitude and I consider how your good will is impacting our classroom community.
In social studies, we have a unit based on the Black Lives Matter at School movement. Students learn about the foundations of Black Lives Matter, the relationship between race, nationality, and ethnicity, and the different intersectionalities of people who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). To elevate and celebrate the greatness of people who are BIPOC, we have learned about colleges and universities in Illinois and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We named students' table groups Columbia College of Chicago, Knox College, Northeastern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Oakton Community College, Roosevelt University, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Each table group researched the size, enrollment, popular majors and average alumni salaries and compared and contrasted them. We did the same for the following HBCUs: Hampton University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, Tuskegee University, and Xavier University of Louisiana. We hung logos from the ceiling and labeled the pencil cups with their school insignia. We also watched videos about the history of HBCUs and a 5th grader's interview with an HBCU alumna.
These table groups also helped students to organize themselves. I was able to label our math materials; science buckets; writing folders; and buckets of pencils, colored pencils, and markers with college and university logos. Students referred to themselves as that institution, and they were proud to represent these schools.
In addition, our current social studies unit focuses on Indigenous People in the Americas. With the printer I was able to print color-coded maps of tribes' locations in Pre-Columbian times and in the present day. We also learned about the importance of corn to indigenous Americans and all of us in the present day. Students studied some contemporary collage artists and made digital "corn collages" where every element of the collage had to have a corn product in it. Collages included makeup, any processed food you can imagine, cola, aspirin, shampoo, even diapers!
Finally, I was able to print some small images to help us with our mental and emotional health. Each day we start the afternoon with mindful breathing. I was able to print images for different intentional breaths: 4-7-8, bee breath, alternate nostril, breath counting, and more! The color images really help the students recall the expectations for each breath.
Thank you again for your support. I will continue to think outside the black-and-white box for ways to engage and organize students' learning thanks to your generosity. Thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Simple Supplies Slashed By Budget Cuts
Funded Dec 30, 2011This is just a small token to show my appreciation for your contribution to our classroom community. I want you to know that your donation continues to help the students and support their learning. The students began using many of the supplies the day after I opened the box.
We were in desperate need of paper to simply make copies, markers to add excitement to our science observations and our stories, scissors to do anything fun. These are the kinds of things that many students are lucky enough to bring to school on the first day or that the school might provide. In a low-income school with a budget that allows teachers 2 reams of paper for the final five months of school, we needed any help we could get.
I hope you realize the impact you have made. Because of you, I was able to present the students with a level of instruction that any child should be granted. Without your help, this would not have been the case. Thank you so much.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
First Grade Science Zone!
Funded Oct 28, 2011As a school community, we are responsible for the achievement of all students. As we all know and understand, however, academic achievement depends on more than just high quality instruction. Socioeconomic status, race, family structure and support, and countless other factors influence development of young learners. As a classroom teacher, many of these elements are beyond my control. I can visit students at home, connect with families, and teach problem solving, but there are still factors that I cannot provide. That said, I can continue to work hard in providing rich opportunities for my students that can give them advantages in their academic and social development.
Creating deep scientific knowledge and thought processes is one advantage I can provide thanks to your generosity. Exploring our world is the primary objective for most classroom subjects, but science is such a rich content area for students to apply so many skills—reading a variety of texts and summarizing, mathematical measurement, data analysis, natural history, cogent writing, drawing conclusions, sketching, building models, and even public speaking. Science is asking questions and seeking answers that lead to more questions. Science is exciting.
But science is also challenging. It takes a wide variety of materials, time, and control. There are students in our class who do not have much experience with free exploration and therefore science is much less accessible. Your generosity allowed me to gather tools (not toys) to help structure our science lessons and explorations. Using tools that have specific purposes can change students into scholars. I can focus on establishing more comprehensible step-by-step guided explorations and then open the experience to more individualized inquiry. Exploring gravity with only a rock can be effective, but exploring it with clip boards, timers, and safety goggles (kid-sized, neon ones at that!) makes it an event that can branch out into many different directions. I am excited by the possibilities these tools present.
Thank you, thank you so much for your generosity, for your commitment to public education, and for your interest in scientific inquiry. I feel empowered to continue to impact our school community in positive ways because of the support you gave our class. I sincerely thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Books On CD For My English Language Learners
Funded Oct 6, 2011As a school community, we are responsible for the achievement of all students. As we all know and understand, however, academic achievement depends on more than just high quality instruction. Socioeconomic status, race, family structure and support, and countless other factors influence development of young learners. As a classroom teacher, many of these elements are beyond my control. I can visit students at home, connect with families, and teach problem solving, but there are still factors that I cannot provide. That said, I can continue to work hard in providing rich opportunities for my students that can give them advantages in their academic and social development.
Being read to is one area of paramount importance in language development—especially for students who speak multiple languages. I certainly remember stories that my parents undoubtedly memorized from reading them so much. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Green Eggs and Ham, Goodnight Moon, Space Case, and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day set the foundation. My parents continued to read to me through adolescence: Jurassic Park, Sphere, and other sci-fi, nerd-out novels. You yourself may have your own personal classics that were read to you or you read to your own young ones. This process gave us all a powerful advantage: a hunger and appreciation for books and an eye for the beautiful arc of a well-written story.
With the addition of these audio books, our class listening center is populated with students every day. The voices, pictures, and stories mesmerize the students. These audiobooks help the stories and texts come alive while also bringing learners to a higher degree of autonomy. This would not be possible without your contribution to this project.
Thank you, thank you so much for your generosity, for your commitment to public education, and for your interest in literacy development. I feel empowered to continue to impact our school community in positive ways because of the support you gave our class. I sincerely thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
Help Me Film Student Theater, Presentations, and Teaching
Funded Aug 23, 2011This is truly a whirlwind year that is taking my ideas in many new directions. I have been able to incorporate our digital video camera into many areas beyond just its intended purpose. We have been able to introduce readers' theater by acting out some of our stories, focusing on body language, facial expression, and the size of our movements. The beloved book "Yo! Yes?" by Chris Raschka was the first big hit for these teaching points. All students were completely engaged and gained greater insight into the story. Success!
The camera has also allowed us to see how we work as a class. I have recorded my own lessons to review, and I recorded the assembly at which we performed. Each classroom performs two assemblies per year at my school, and our first was a math song I wrote. We practiced the song daily and even added posters and actions to help act out its meaning. We went into the lunchroom to practice it on stage, and I had one first-grader record it. The cinematography was horrific, but she was proud of it nonetheless. When the day of the assembly arrived, they sang nervously but with pride. Recording it allowed us to debrief the experience as well as point out what makes a good assembly.
This is just the beginning. I know that with more experience working with my curricula I will be able to incorporate the camera in even more meaningful ways. Thank you, thank you for this opportunity. I believe having the technology makes me more aware and think outside of the text-book. I will not forget your kindness.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Yasukawa
This classroom project was brought to life by Quill.com and 3 other donors.