"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary."
-- Thomas Carruthers
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
-- Socrates
I teach 4th grade, all subjects. My sweet, sweet class is located in an area where there is a mix of lower-middle class and below. A handful of my students have had their electricity shut off on them multiple times, and have witnessed or dealt with things at their young age that I will probably never have to experience in my lifetime. And of course, when students experience adversities such as these, they come to school with much more burdensome worries on their mind besides addition and subtraction. We have very supportive administration, but of course funds are limited as our enrollment numbers sky-rocketed and reached its maximum capacity this year.
I have really been digging deep into the data I have available on my class as a whole, and each student individually. One common thread I noticed with this year's group is a weakness in mathematical problem solving and open-response answering.
When I saw these journals on the Lakeshore website, I got SO excited because I thought this might be the perfect tool to help give my students daily practice in these areas.
I particularly love how I can use it for whole-group instruction, but that it also comes with answer keys so that I can invite them to self-check their work as a center or small group activity.
There is research that supports that if a student is behind academically by 3rd or 4th grade, they are most likely going to stay behind for the remainder of their educational careers.
Help me break that statistic. Your generous donation will not just supply our classroom with another teaching tool, but it will help equip my students with the support they need in the areas they need it most. It will scaffold the problem-solving skills they need, not just for mathematics but for real-life contexts they will encounter in the future.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. S. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.