Welcome to our DonorsChoose.org Community! Join us in supporting students in need by making a donation of any size to one of the worthy projects below.
All teachers are special. Special ed teachers have extra special needs for their students. Our students aren't conventional learners. They need quiet-time areas in the classrooms with mats and over-sized pillows, they need headphones to quiet the noise. They have sensory diets that need to be met with balls, sand, play dough, bubbles, ... more
Welcome to our DonorsChoose.org Community! Join us in supporting students in need by making a donation of any size to one of the worthy projects below.
All teachers are special. Special ed teachers have extra special needs for their students. Our students aren't conventional learners. They need quiet-time areas in the classrooms with mats and over-sized pillows, they need headphones to quiet the noise. They have sensory diets that need to be met with balls, sand, play dough, bubbles, brushes, weighted vests, etc. They need iPads for communication and manipulatives and items for sorting and counting as well as items for tasks. The list is endless. We need to supply pencils, notebooks, class library and curriculum books...you name it, we need it and we can't educate our students without your generous help. We teach to the same state standards as general ed. Please help us so our students can be educated to lead lives as independently as possible.
Please check out our FB page too! https://www.facebook.com/SpecialEdTeachers hide
The students in my class we so excited when we received our refrigerator, as we do a lot of cooking projects to support our social and communication skills.
We go on weekly shopping trips to buy ingredients for our cooking project of the week. Our refrigerator enables us to go shopping the day before and have a place to store our ingredients. My students love to be the one who gets to go to the refrigerator tout the food inside or take the food out.
Our next classroom project is to obtain the robots Dash and Dot in order to learn about coding. Thank you for supporting our classroom.”
I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you who helped to make our wish of having a classroom rug become a reality. Students with special needs love to spend time time on the floor, relaxing, playing with toys, and even reading and looking at books.
Our rug serves many purposes. We use it for sensory breaks for the students, when they need to take a break from the rest of the group. The students love to use the rug when they have choice time and are working on their play skills.
The students love to sit on the rug, they really enjoy it. Thank you again for supporting my classroom”
My students and I are using the resources we received every day. We love having the color printer to write our stories and use clip art to go along with the stories. The construction paper is used for creating colorful art projects that bring our reading stories to life. We used the construction paper to make an outline of our arms, hands, and write our goals for the school year on them.
The students have so many materials now. They were so excited to see the mold-able art sand, the color printer, butcher paper, and construction paper. These are all items that are not something we ask parents for or are provided through the school. We received only the bare essentials.
The next thing that we will use will be the butcher paper to create graphs. We are studying all types of graphs in math and being able to display these on the paper in the hallway will spark the creativity and learning in all the students”
With gratitude,
Ms. Madden
This classroom project was brought to life by #BestSchoolDay and 8 other donors.
Thank you so much for your generous donation to fund my project. Science is one of my students' favorite subjects. They were so excited when they saw the boxes containing the science kits and wanted to dig into them right away.
The opportunity for hands on projects have a huge impact on participation and progress with my students. Teaching multiple grade levels require lots of planning. Full unit lesson plans and activities like these are a time saver for me, but most importantly give my students plenty of opportunities to participate in science exploration and inquiry.
We cannot wait for our next science unit. Thank you again for helping my students reach their full potential with excitement!”
Having these materials in my classroom caused a frenzy of happy learning in my classroom. Teaching shapes and building shapes can at times get repetitive. Having these materials turned my students into little architects and engineers. It was truly exciting to see my students excited about building 2D and 3D shapes. Math time truly became the happiest time of the school day next to recess and lunch. I introduced the materials to the students by modeling building a few shapes but I didn't want to give all the cool fun ideas away. I truly left it up to them to explore, problem solve and work together to build various shapes and structures. Having these materials made it much easier to teach concepts such as vertices, angle and edge. These materials truly made a difference and made it much more fun and engaging for my students to learn new skills. It also gave me a new box of tools to use with teaching skills about shapes. Overall my students mastered the unit on 2D and 3D shapes and they couldn't be more prepared and aware of shapes and structures in our natural world. To all of my donors thank you so much for your support it truly made teaching shapes a whole lot of fun!”
Thank you so much for supporting my classroom! We are so blessed to have such great support. My students struggle sitting still for long periods and struggle with sensory integration. The wiggle seats/fidget items have been an amazing help to our students!
We have found that students are able to get out some of their energy through the use of the items, in an appropriate and socially acceptable way. They are then able to focus on the task at hand.
Without friends like you these items wouldn't be attainable with our limited funds. Thank you so much!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Snow
This classroom project was brought to life by Google.org and 10 other donors.
The iPad is a beloved addition to our classroom. My students enjoy listening to the Harry Potter series and their textbooks using a low vision reading app. We have also managed to connect a small braille typewriter called a Refreshabraille which allows my students to follow along in the book using electronic braille pins that pop up to display the text. They can also use the Refreshabraille to type assignments and email them directly to their teacher instead of waiting to have someone transcribe their work on a traditional brailler.
My students are most excited about completing online research independently. They are still learning how to use the accessibility features but I have already seen so much growth in their independence. Thank you for believing in my students, you have made a big difference!”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Macias
This classroom project was brought to life by #BestSchoolDay and 41 other donors.
I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing my classroom and my very special little learners to support.
When we received the boxes of scooters my students were absolutely elated! I honestly had a really hard time calming them down and reminding them that we have neighbors next door and need to use our indoor voices. My students could hardly wait to test them out. First I explained that on days when the Arizona sun reached 115 degrees we would be able to use these inside of the classroom and that they would still be able to have recess-but indoors. Needless to say they were very happy. After I explained the other times we would be able to use the scooters we had to go and try them out! All of the other classes walking by stopped to check out our new scooters! What an exciting time for my students.
The scooters have been such a fantastic addition to our classroom! We use them on a weekly basis and not only have they been positive motivators for my students but they have also been an excellent way of getting all of the energy my little wigglers have out!”
Thank you so much for helping support our students with a little more energy than most. These alternative seating options have done wonders for our students. We now have a variety and that enables students to find the option that works best for them. It seems so easy to self-regulate ourselves with movement and fidgeting, but it's actually one other thing we have to teach students. With all of the proper supplies and options available we have the tools necessary to help them.
Thanks again for supporting our students. It is much appreciated!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Carrico
This classroom project was brought to life by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and 50 other donors.
Thank you for your donation to my classroom. Your donation allows me to get six Chromebooks for my classroom. My students are excited to use the Chromebooks in class. Having the Chromebooks allow me to incorporate technology in my classroom. We have been able to use the Chromebooks to access an online reading program called Achieve 3000. This program is used weekly to help increase my students' reading level and help prepare students for standardized testing. We also have use the Chromebooks to complete research. Students have recently researched careers and created presentations. We also have been able to use built in assitive technology features in the Chromebooks. Students are able to speak and type to create documents. Finally we are able to play educational online games. Most recently we have used a free program named Kahoot to do interactive online quizzes. Once again, thank you for helping my classroom.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Williams
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