"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."
Mark Van Doren
Students in our district are from a small, rural community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our community has a lower socio-economic population, with state data showing 57% of the students being economically disadvantaged and 77% of the eligible students participating in free and reduced lunch programs. Our attendance averages above 95% daily with only one day this past year below 90%. Our students are dedicated and enthusiastic learners. They react well to research-based instruction. My goal is to purchase supplies allowing us to support academic and social situations, and focus on individual living and life skills. When this project is funded, my students will be able to have additional resources that will allow them to thrive educationally and emotionally in an effort to meet each individual’s personal potential.
My Project
This year our school system lost our art and music programs in grades K-7 due to lack of qualified teacher applicants. We were able to hire an educator to teach coding to all of our K-12 students. As a teacher for students with special needs for grades K-5, I teach students with a variety of challenges throughout the day. I am always looking for ways to include each of my students in the general education setting, and incorporating techniques to support those individuals in each setting.
The Code & Go Robot Mouse is a very basic hands-on approach to teach cause and effect relationships while coding a robot and realizing your actions have meaning.
Finding age appropriate and stimulating materials to engage my students can be difficult. This classroom kit allows my students to physically build an obstacle course, use arrow place cards to decide how to navigate the course, program the mouse based on the cards, then press the go button to see if it works. The code can be as short as one step or as many as 20 directives, allowing me to differentiate instruction for each student. This kit also comes with a math game to practice basic math computation and counting that utilizes the robot, thereby increasing student engagement. Through the use of STEM materials and teaching coding in a very concrete way with immediate feedback, my students will better understand the planning required to achieve an outcome. This life skill can be generalized to personal and classroom goals further supporting the learning of individual life skills.
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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. Putnam and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
