Inspiring high-risk students to attend college! I am an inclusion teacher in an alternative education program in an urban school district in Indiana. The students that I serve come from an impoverished area and 87% of the school receives free and reduced lunch. The district has identified my students as being under-grade and over-age. They are in grades 5-8. Several of the students have special learning needs and most are visual and auditory learners.
The goal of the program is to teach and reinforce the skills needed to "catch up" the two or more years the students have been retained. These skills are taught during the course of one academic year. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts in the district, many of the essential resources are not available or not working. Despite the lack of resources, however, the students persevere, and are very eager to catch up to their peers. In addition, all of them have goals of graduating high school and attending college in the future.
In order to adequately prepare my students for college, they need to acquire organizational skills and need reinforcement of skills learned in the classroom. The Elmo Document Reader will allow a "real time" opportunity to hone in on the essential organizational skills necessary to succeed at the high school and college levels. For example, students will be able to see me model note-taking skills or organization of a binder by viewing it on the projector. The primary focus in the program is on math and language arts. Reading skills can be demonstrated and modeled with the Elmo. Many of my students cannot afford eye-glasses. The document reader also helps to enlarge the item so that students who do have some visual impairment can also see what is going on. Furthermore, the document reader reaches all types of learning styles by showing and talking about the skill at the same time. Students can also follow along if it is a kinesthetic activity that is part of the lesson.
With your help, my students, who otherwise may not have had this opportunity, will realize their dreams of going to college can be a reality when they have the right tools and the right attitude!
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Wheeler and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.