Cultivating an Organized, Professional, and Dynamic Learning Environment
My students need desk supplies organizing caddies to support their transition from elementary desks to shared work tables, a laminating machine & pouches to create durable learning materials, and an iPad to facilitate dynamic learning!
My students are a diverse group of learners who have a wide range of special educational needs in the areas of reading and/or receptive language, writing and/or expressive language, math, communication, social behavior, independent living skills and vocational preparation.
These students are curious and motivated learners - and they also have intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism, Fragile X syndrome, and cerebral palsy.
We live and go to school in a large urban district with limited resources. We have a wonderful, supportive school community.
My Project
Looking forward to my third year as a high school special education teacher, I am motivated to continue improving my practice and to seek ways to create a more powerful learning environment for each of my students. One of the changes that my students, staff, and I are excited about is that we are anticipating getting new desks this summer that are more age-appropriate and modern. Our new desks will be shared workspaces (two to a desk). Students will share work materials and therefore need desktop organizing caddies to support the organizational and social skills they'll need to keep shared work materials organized - much like they will need to do in the job setting.
In addition to desktop organizing caddies to help students stay organized as they transition to sharing work spaces with their peers, we need a laminating machine and laminating pouches to help us maintain professional-quality, reusable paper-based learning materials.
Now that we have a color printer (thanks to Donors Choose!), we have a growing number of fantastic-looking paper-based resources that we want to protect for repeated use.
Finally, we need an iPad for classroom use. With an iPad, we can take advantage of highly useful iPad apps for special education; quickly access images and video that will build students' background knowledge and conceptual understanding; and I can more easily model use of the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) software on the iPad that several of my students use to communicate and participate in lessons.
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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. Mandic and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
