Makerspace Materials: Making Magic with Markers and More!
My students need supplies for a maker space including markers, paint, colored pencils and poster boards for creating projects both in class and for enrichment.
One of the biggest challenges I've run into since I moved to this school in August is that about half of the students do not have access to maker materials such as poster board, markers, scissors, glue, colored pencils, and the like. Every student deserves to succeed and prove their creativity.
Many of my students are able to get and bring their own creative supplies on their own or they have a great collection of maker materials at home.
Unfortunately, that is only about half of our population at best. For the others, they have to pick a less hands-on way to complete assignments (such as PowerPoint slides, or another web 2.0 tool). This is fine for some of the students--they enjoy working on computers. However, that still leaves a big number of our kids who don't have the means to buy their own maker supplies, even though their best way of demonstrating their knowledge of a concept may be through a hands-on method such as creating a piece of art. Our school runs the gamut from students who are very well off to those whose parents work multiple jobs to make the rent and feed the children. There is simply no money at home to provide those students with such materials as poster board, markers and other creative tools.
My Project
“Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, 1984, p. 38). Students need a way to transform their experience and express their learning in a number of different ways. One of those ways is to create a physical product that embodies the concept that the student has learned. Often when our teachers assign a formative assessment, students are given a choice of how they would like like to prove their learning. By being able to offer our students the maker materials in this project, I will be able to level the playing field and assure that any student who wants to create a physical piece as their finished product is able to do so, regardless of their socioeconomic level. All students will get a chance to create awesome projects and get physical with their learning.
Because I have a limited budget in my library (what public school doesn't suffer that?), I have to be incredibly selective in how I spend what I'm given.
This means that all of my budget goes directly to books for the students. I want to provide the additional materials that will allow our students to be makers and creators without taking away from my primary goal of creating lifelong lovers of reading and literature. Getting funded on this project will give my students the best of both worlds!
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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 Ms. Stultz and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
