My students need pencils, markers, clipboards, easel pads, post-it notes and sentence strips. They need rhyming dictionaries, and books on conventions and word study.
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Students
My 27 students come from a city consistently ranked as one with the highest crime rate, highest child poverty rate and highest alcohol abuse rate in the nation. Nonetheless, I expect excellence and push my students to rise above the difficulty of their lives to be their best, brightest selves.
My school was designated, 5 years ago, as one of the lowest achieving in the state.
Since that time, we have redesigned ourselves, and with help from the state, new administrators and extensive professional development, we've become one of the top performing schools in the state. In fact, the governor came to our school to award our progress, and we were just named a "School of Distinction" by the United States Department of Education.
My Project
On recent test scores our students showed weakness in the area of writing conventions and vocabulary.
My students will use the easel pads, pencils, sentence strips, clipboards and post-it notes to work in groups and examine, deconstruct, reconstruct and debate conventions and their rules. They will use the rhyming dictionaries, and Merriam Webster synonym and antonyms books as they do their word study work and study words, their sounds and their complex meanings. The Blue Book of Grammar and other grammar books will be used to compare definitions about conventions with the students' own constructed definitions.
In the end, the students will create their own reference materials: books on punctuation and grammar; books about rhyming sounds, as well as books on antonyms and synonyms. Students will learn that the potentially dry work of word study and grammar conventions actually results in fun and a greater ability to express oneself.
Basics such as pencils, erasers and tissues can not be taken for granted at our school.
Having the supplies we need to investigate punctuation, to share our learning and to publish our own books will add joy and a sense of ease and success to our room.
The students are getting more excited about punctuation and word play. This project will create empowered, skilled writers with a stronger sense of voice and greater awareness of the tools available to all writers.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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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. Lauterbach and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
