Bringing Math Activities Home to Spark Student Curiosity and Engagement
My students need hands-on math activities that they can bring home to learn and play with their families in order to spark their natural curiosity and help them to develop their critical thinking skills.
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.
My Students
My students are amazingly energetic and eager to learn, but they are a diverse group, with different academic and social/emotional needs. Many are English Language Learners, with little to no exposure to the English language outside of school. They crave learning opportunities that reflect their diversity and teach them the academic and social-emotional skills they so desperately need, in authentic and engaging ways.
In my classroom, there are 22 unique, creative, diverse, and brilliant students, each bubbling with potential.
However, there are many barriers that get in the way of them achieving what they are capable of doing. My school is a Minnesota Focus school, meaning it is in the lowest ten percent of schools that receive Title I dollars in our state.
Many students are English Language Learners with little to no exposure to the English language outside of school. Over 90% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is very diverse, including African American, Latino, Somali, Asian, Native American, and white students. Our school has a high population of homeless and transient students, and many students have experienced great deals of trauma in their young lives.
My Project
My students need to have opportunities to engage in hands-on math activities at home with their families. However, there are not resources at my school to provide for more than traditional homework in the form of worksheets. This project would provide my students with the opportunity to practice math skills at home with their families in a hands-on, engaging way.
Having hands-on math games and activities that students can bring home will not only promote math development, but also spark the students' natural curiosity and help develop their critical-thinking skills.
In this way, students will discover that math can be fun, engaging, and incredibly valuable in all aspects of life. The Number Sense teaching cards will provide opportunities for parents to work one-on-one with their students on specific skills that need extra practice. The Place Value Number Hunt will be a fun game for parents to work on to help students master one more/one less and ten more/ten less. The magnetic math cards will build number, addition, and subtraction skills in an engaging way and promote student independence. The Building Math Skills listening activities will allow parents to listen along with children as they learn math skills, allowing parents to develop the math language to better support their children's education. And the pattern blocks activity cards will help parents to problem-solve with their children as well as build shape recognition.
My students will be growing in their understanding of math while also building relationships with their families that promote learning. This project will allow me to provide my families with math activities to support my students outside of the classroom and truly be teachers to their children.
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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. Bibeau and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
