My students need to have hands-on materials focused around astronomy, like 3 telescopes, star chart notebooks, and solar system transparency books. Hands-on learning lasts a lifetime!
Hands-on experimenting is how my students retain their science knowledge. Without having the proper equipment, we are unable to experiment to learn more about astronomy. With these materials, we will be able to continue our learning, and bring it to our community as well!
My students are eager learners, but have started life at a disadvantage.
Our school has around 450 students (K-5), with about a 90% poverty rate. My students come in with worries they should not be concerned with yet. The best I can do for them is to provide as many hands-on learning experiences as possible, so they can really learn and understand what they are learning. The more engaged and involved they are, the more they will get out of the lessons.
My Project
Our state has many requirements for astronomy lessons. Some of them involve learning about our planet's orbit, looking at the constellations and how they change from season to season, knowing about the earth and how the size/shape of it affects gravity, patterns in the seasons/moon phases/waves, and looking at why the moon looks different depending on the day. These lessons can be taught through hands-on inquiry with the help of these materials.
With these donations, we will be purchasing 3 telescopes (so all of the fifth grade classes can have their own), 3 class sets of star maps for all students to use (to be reused every year), a hands-on science kit (for each classroom) that looks at our Earth in many details, and two sets of visuals (for each classroom) to help bring astronomy to life in the classroom.
Science is not only important in life, but the act of inquiry learning is a life-long skill that we are trying to give to our students.
If I can teach them how to discover new things on their own (through inquiry learning), and reinforce their results as a class, then we can help improve our future. The learners of today are the future of tomorrow - help me keep their interest in making our world a better place!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Rudko and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
