Daniel "Lil' Ed" Baldwin's Giving Page

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I would like to take a moment to thank the donor's for this project. The materials that were purchased by you made this project possible. This project has turned out to be one of the most rewarding activities that we have done this year. When I first started planning this project I thought it would be a project where the students would design and build a scaled of a home for a client, but it ended up being a much larger and more rewarding project.

When I announced the project I started by saying that they would have to interview a client to design a home for. Most of the students were interested in the project but not all. I followed that statement by saying that we not only were going to design the homes but we were also going to construct a small scaled model of the house. That was the hook. I showed them a few examples of what the model will look like. A few of the students stated "We'll never be able to do that.....". Well a month later they were building their own models. As students completed their homes we were able to do sunlight studies and a many or add-on lessons to the project.

This project made me realize once again why project based learning projects are such a strong tool to use in the classroom. As far as this project goes, it would not have been possible without all of the generous donors here at donorschoose.com. Thank you so much for your support. Wish I could have captured the sprit in the room as they were building their projects.”

With gratitude,

Mr. Walker

Thank you so much for your contributions to DonorsChoose and to our science classroom in particular. Your funds made it possible to buy a set of calculators and stopwatches for sixth-graders at our middle school. The materials arrived mid-winter and students have made good use of them since in various investigations and activities.

Among the skills we've been learning and practicing in class are identifying and collecting data, and then organizing and analyzing it. The calculators and stopwatches are valuable tools to help students learn and practice these skills.

Recently, for example, students have been studying how much trash students waste at school lunch. They sorted school lunch waste for the sixth grade for a week -- separating and measuring food waste, recyclable waste and other trash -- and then recording the data. Students then used calculators to help with their analysis as they made sense of the numbers they had collected. At the end of their investigation, they used their findings to make recommendations to the school for changing waste habits.

I can't tell you how important these kinds of experiences are for student learning. To have the right tools, such as the ones you've provided, is critical to student growth. In our school, with students mostly coming from high-poverty areas, this exposure is even more important, since they don't often see these kinds of materials in their home environments. ”

With gratitude,

Ms. Watson

We have just completed the third novel "Squanto" and I am astounded by the way my students have become so much more curious about the Native Americans and the impact they had on the colonists. In fact, the book has led us to a full fledged research into the Wampanoag tribes and their history. I can't thank you enough for your generous donations and hope that my descriptions are enough for you to fully realize the impact that the books your donations purchased had on my class.

Each book enabled students to develop and deeper and fuller understanding about the history of John Henry and the development of inventions during that time. The illustrations were beautiful and captivated their imagination. They certainly understand a tall tale now and had great fun creating their own.

In addition, "Just Juice" was a compassionate story of a girl and the struggles she and her family dealt with. The story reverberated in my students' daily lives as I watched them become more helpful to a couple of the struggling readers in the class. They also expressed how much more they appreciated their own families and were able to recognize the beauty and strength they gain from helping each other.

Again, thank you so much and know that your donation has an incredible impact on the education and personal lives of my students that will carry on with them for many more years to come. Most important, they have developed a keen interest in reading even more books!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Doeirng-Rebello

We've been using the books you donated for some time now, and their impact has been tremendous. I want to extend another note of thanks and gratitude. Students are not only becoming better writers, they are growing into themselves.

We are working hard to discover our own ideas, develop our own voices, and articulate our most complex arguments with clarity and precision. Our drafts are not always pretty, as great writing seldom is at first, but Write Source gives us confidence to stumble and try again (and again, and again) because we have ready access to our own, personalized supports right at our sides.

Shortly after introducing the books, Tylee came up to me after class. He said, "Thank you for helping me learn how to help myself. I see it now." He gets it!

Your impact will stick with my kids long after they leave my classroom. They are not yet perfect writers, but by learning how to find and use the right resources, they are gaining the confidence they need to help themselves. This confidence and skill will allow them to grow for a lifetime.

There are few moments more satisfying for a teacher than to see his students take off and begin to thrive independently, as my kids have with these books. In a few short months they will be off to college and largely on their own. I'm confident they'll find success.

Thank you for donating a resource that would ultimately teach them how to help themselves. Thank you for empowering my kids!

”

With gratitude,

Mr. Martin

The class sets of Ishmael Beah's novel, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier had a huge impact on my classroom. The books introduced my students to a world outside of the one they know. We explored issues concerning refugees around the world, wrote out own memoirs, and read the novel from cover to cover (a first for some students.)

Moreover, the success of this novel and the memoir unit as a whole sparked a bit of change in the English department. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier has been added to the English I curriculum, and your donations helped make this possible. Students enjoyed the multicultural learning opportunities provided by the novel, and many of them, like Beah, wrote emotionally gripping personal memoirs about their lives. Students mirrored Beah's use of figurative language and imagery in their own writing, and they opened up in ways I'd never seen before.

Again, thank you so much for all you've done to help my students. Words cannot express the true impact of your donation.”

With gratitude,

Mr. Sass

Thank you for your generosity. My students and I love our new table bins. They have helped create an organized learning environment where students can easily find their materials. Since having the bins, our tables are clean and students have an abundance of work space. They have also reduced our time that was wasted due to students having to go to their cubbies to gather their materials. Students would quickly shove their books into their cubbies. Book covers were getting bent and torn. Thankfully, the bins have helped my students take much better care of their materials.

It's wonderful to have people like you that take time to acknowledge schools that are struggling. In my school system, we have a very limited resources and it is often difficult to reach out to all of my students. I sincerely thank you for providing resources that allow my students to learn and grow in an organized and productive learning environment. Allowing students to have the appropriate materials at their fingertips creates a sense of independence as well as reduces students misplacing their materials.

”

With gratitude,

Ms. Hebert

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This is just a small token of my gratitude for your generous donation to my classroom. The sight word and phonics centers that you donated have helped my students grow their knowledge every day. They are so engaged hen using the activities and they have the opportunity to collaboratively learn as they complete their work. The phonics centers are helping them learn to decode words and the sight words are helping with their fluency, all of which are making each one of my student's a better reader. I know that these resources are making a huge difference and will continue to for future Kindergartners.

Our school district is facing a huge budget cut so without your kind gift; my students would not have these resources. I am proud to share that a have some students who have mastered all 220 sight words and some students are reading at 1st and 2nd grade levels. I truly believe that these independent learning centers have pushed them even further and this would not have been possible without each one of you.

”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Stern

Words

cannot capture my excitement and gratitude for your donation to my project. The

classroom library that you funded has given my students insight to foreign situations and unknown things. You have enabled me to cultivate a love for reading amongst my students by having popular teen novels like The Twilight Series, The Lightening Thief Series, and more available for them. It brightens my day when I see students reading before the bell rings, talking about the forbidden romance between Bella and Edward, or swarming my bookshelf. My students cannot wait to do book talks/reviews, character Facebook pages, and other projects based around self-selected books. Again,

I sincerely thank you for your generous contribution to my students' education. ”

With gratitude,

Ms. Marr

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your generous donation to our classroom! As it became clear early in the year that our school would soon be out of paper, I quickly began to brainstorm ways to teach without paper. It simply wasn't going to work. Because of you, my students have been able to do the entire year of math, review skills through homework, work on their TAI (an individualized computation program) and also be really creative in using the paper for art projects.

The math curriculum we use does not use a text book as the primary source of material; most of the work the students do comes from photocopies. The thought of trying to do this without paper was daunting. I thought about projecting the problems daily, and having them copy things on to their own paper, but accuracy was going to be a huge issue! Think of trying to measure to the 16th of an inch, from an overhead! This would also frustrate MANY students before they even started actually doing any math. The copying from the board would be enough work to frustrate many students.

Our homework is a key tool in reviewing skills that we have learned throughout the year. Very rarely are "new" skills included on the homework. It is primarily made up of skills that we have worked on throughout the year, to ensure that students don't learn something, and then forget it the next week. Thank you for helping my students maintain all their math skills, all year long.

The students in my class are all at very vastly different levels. We use a program in our classroom called TAI. This program focus solely on computation skills, using subtraction, addition, multiplication, division, of whole numbers, decimals and fractions. It allows the students to work at their own pace. Some students might be working on multiplying whole numbers, while others are working on dividing fractions. For every five pages they do, no matter where they are in the levels, the students earn a reward. The students are VERY motivated by this program, but creating all the books at each level takes 14 pieces of paper. Your donation has made this program possible.

Thank you so much for making our class a success. Your donation has impacted more than 50 students, and has enabled them to be successful.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Coy

Dear Donors,

I can't thank you enough for you generous donations for our listening center. My student's faces were priceless when I received these big boxes in my room and told them that we have received a listening center and new books on cd. Their excitement to use these centers is still as strong as it was from the first day. My 26 students utilize these listening centers every day and it has helped my struggling students want to read books and it has helped my stronger students become more engaged in rigorous books.

My wonderful first grade students would not have had the opportunity to choose from so many fun books and new ways to read without all of your help. You generosity in my classroom is greatly appreciated and my students thank you from the bottoms of their hearts.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Bailey