Celebrate Black Teachers and Students
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
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Mrs. Franklin from Savannah GA is requesting other through DonorsChoose, the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
My students need critters for their Ecosystems! With these materials, they will be able to build an entire working ecosystem to study and populate it with animals!
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
There is power in building a world that living things exist in. My students are eager to learn about the world around them and I am eager to do more than take them outside for a walk!
My students are all urban residents and most of them are from low income households.
We live twenty miles from a beach, but most of my students have never seen the ocean. They play in their neighborhoods, but only see the "critters" that they get yelled at for handling in their back yards. Thanks to budget cuts, even field trips are something that have become a memory to my fourth graders! We are a neighborhood school, too, so the best I have to offer them by taking them outside are the same things they would see in their own backyards. While I am constantly dragging things inside for them, their understanding of an Ecosystem depends on their experience with more than just a worm or a butterfly!
At our school, we are lucky to have a Science lab, but it has been sadly underfunded over the last few years and there is no budget for buying living organisms for my classes to interact with. With these live animals, I intend to have small groups of students build an ecosystem out of a pair of soda bottles that will include not only the crust layers (i.e., the things they see in their backyards), but also the water table and aquatic ecosystems! Yes, I could show them pictures of an ecosystem, even find truly beautiful ones online for them to look at. However, I am a firm believer that it is only when you hold that cricket in your hand that you truly understand the responsibility the Ecosystem and Habitat has in protecting it and providing for it.
It is my hope that, with your donations to this project, I will be able to immerse my students in a study of an ecosystem so they will better understand how to care for the world around them.
This project may look like a cool terrarium, but the reality is that it introduces more than just aesthetics and an observation of smaller organisms. This project delves into the effects of pollution on an ecosystem and teaches them that what they do really DOES affect the world around them!
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Expand the "Where your donation goes" section below to see exactly what Mrs. Franklin is requesting.
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