The cost of the digital camera is $699, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
My first-grade students at Richard Carroll Elementary School love to see pictures of themselves participating in classroom activities, but often the moment is gone by the time I find the one of four digital cameras in our entire school. Over the 13 years I have taught first grade, I know how important these pictures are to the children and their families.
On the first day of school, I take each child's picture and display it on our room's "apple tree." The children use those pictures to make magnets to give their parents at Christmas. These magnets are very meaningful to parents-usually as a refrigerator magnet-to remember their child's first day of first grade.
The children love to write and assemble books, and they enjoy taking their copy home to share with their parents and family. I use the "Children as Authors" format and take a picture of the class as authors and place it on the back of the book. This one little activity makes all the difference to these children when they show their families the book they made.
Our school is a Reading First school, and each day my students have many wonderful educational experiences in my classroom that I would like to capture for them. Pictures also provide instant reinforcement of the objective or standard being addressed. Routinely, visitors from the community visit our classroom and help the students with activities. For instance, one regular guest is an artist who conducts art activities designed to complement a topic we have just studied. I like to take pictures of the children participating in these activities. I also share these pictures with our local paper so the community knows about the great things happening in our school!
In the past, I have used my personal Polaroid camera to take my students' pictures, but the cost of using it has become too much for me to absorb. I now have a classroom printer that is capable of printing digital photographs, and I am writing this proposal in hopes of receiving the $500.00 to purchase a digital camera to keep in my classroom and use daily.
I cannot think of a more wonderful sight than first-graders seeing their faces appear right in front of them!
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