Anna Karplus's Social Media Challenge

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Since receiving the books you so graciously funded I introduced them to the students, extolling their virtues, in order to create excitement about them. Now the new titles are in demand by many students, and most importantly, by many of my reluctant readers.

The key to getting this type of reader motivated is finding a series that they want to read and keep reading because these series help them build comprehension, and over time, increase their reading level. What makes it challenging is finding just the right series. Fortunately, the series I ordered were new series in my classroom which aroused their curiosity, and great series that have touched something in many of these students who have now found series they want to read.

The positive impact of having these new series is best illustrated by sharing what happened with one of my students in the last week. A boy in my class discovered the Owen Foote series. This series has humor which I thought he would find appealing and he has. He is already on his fourth book in the series and when I saw him go get the fifth book from the shelf, I said how wonderful it was that he was already on the fifth title. He then told me that he is aImost finished with the fourth title and wanted to get the fifth title so he would have it to start right away. Wow!

I thank you again for your donation which added all of these great books to my library, and is already making such a difference to my students.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. WHITLEY

Thank you so very much for supporting readers in my classroom! My students have voracious appetites for books and your generosity will help satisfy their love for reading! Thank you for making it possible for my students to connect with characters in a series of books. I look forward to seeing my students get engaged with the delightful characters of Iris and Walter and Geronimo Stilton and his friends. Since there will now be multiple titles in each series available in our classroom, readers will have the opportunity to follow characters through many adventures in these fun and engaging chapter books. Thanks to your support, my students will be able to track these characters through a series, and thereby develop a deeper understanding of how characters change, be able to predict their actions, make inferences, make connections and deepen their comprehension. Their discussions about the characters across stories will be rich and interesting and they will look forward to the next story! A million thanks for providing my students with the Iris and Walter series as well as the Geronimo Stilton series! Now they will have a great time getting hooked on chapter books!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Mathewson

Thank you so much for your amazing donation! We really appreciate your generosity and support of public education! I am so thankful that you chose to support my class of incredible artists! They are very talented and these supplies have helped them create beautiful art, just like Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh (the first 2 artists we studied this year). Thematic Fun (art and science) has become the most exciting time of the day! The students can't wait to sketch a sunflower like Van Gogh or a haystack or bridge like Monet! Thank you so much~ you are all my heroes!!!”

With gratitude,

Teacher

I can not express to you enough how you have made a positive impact on funding my class project. My class is already benefiting from using this amazing tool. After I teach a minilesson to my class, the students practice the teaching strategy. I am able to use the Flip Video Camera to capture the students in action and then share the recording during the share part of the lesson right afterwards. The students are able to witness themselves practicing the strategy. What a powerful tool to be able to watch themselves and have other students learn from their classmates!!

Thanks again for your generosity! ”

With gratitude,

Ms. Schneider

Thank you so much for all the amazing art books! Your incredible support of art in our public school is incredible! I can't wait to share Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Kevin Henkes with my first grade students! They are my favorite artists and my students are going to love all the books and art we will create this year! I am in awe of your kindness and generosity! I will be forever grateful to you for keeping art alive in my classroom! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

With gratitude,

Teacher

Thank you for the funding opportunity to purchase multiple sets of simple machine Lego kits for my 7th grade students. The students had a blast building each simple machine and were able to make connections about how simple machines make work easier. They were able to build several examples which helped to reinforce the simple as well as complex moving parts for levers, gears, pulleys, and wheel and axles. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share such a wonderful lesson with my students.

Thank you again.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Mabry

In today's society, computers are everything! There is so very little that we can do without computers, it is a shock to think that many classrooms in the United States do not even have one computer regularly available for student use. Although the school where I work has laptop carts which we rotate amongst teachers, there are many times that it makes all the difference in the world for a student just to be able to jump on a computer to look something up or get something done. Now, this is possible in my classroom.

In addition, I saw last year how many useless pages of paper were being printed for students to simply turn in an essay to me. If it were possible for the students to turn these in via email, I thought, I could read them on a screen and not have to waste paper. Now, students do just that. When we have laptop carts, they can email them to me that way, otherwise, they take turns on the desktop, e-submitting their papers.

The computer has also been of great help to my play production class as they have used it for researching costumes and other important information. Over the next semester, the computer will again be constantly in use as we now have a program called Accelerated Reader which requires students to take comprehension quizzes after they finish reading outside reading books. I don't know how this would have been possible without a computer in my classroom, but now, thanks to you, I am looking forward to great success. ”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Mohr

Thank you so much for funding my students' request for East of Eden books. Quiet a few students had read this book as an independent reading book and highly recommend that it become a part of the required in-class reading. Unfortunately, because of lack of school funds, we haven't been able to do this. Thanks to you, it will now become a core text that is read every year in the California Literature classes at our school. We look forward to sharing it with them this semester and with other students in years to come. Thank you for your generosity!!!”

With gratitude,

Teacher