Establishing Empathy and Social Awareness Through Read Alouds
Help me give my students access to beginning of year read aloud materials to build community and promote empathy.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Minas's classroom raised $303
This project is fully funded
My Students
Distance learning has, unsurprisingly, been a challenge for teachers all across the world during this unprecedented pandemic. We left our physical school on Friday, March 13 and launched our online learning the following Monday. Our school is a Title I elementary school that serves nearly 400 students, with 55% of our students coming from low-income backgrounds.
My resilient, hardworking fifth graders have risen to the challenges of distance learning and have quickly and skillfully adapted to these difficult circumstances.
They continue to push themselves academically across all content areas to continue their growth and set themselves up for success as they transition to new middle schools next year.
Our fifth graders will begin their final year of elementary school participating in remote learning. Each year, the first six weeks are dedicated to building community and relationships among students. Distance learning presents an obvious challenge to establishing the foundations for our class community because we will not be physically together. To offset these challenges, we will be exploring ways to build community while promoting social and emotional well-being among the members of our class.
My Project
Establishing a strong classroom community and building connections among students and adults within a class is important regardless of whether we are physically in the same classroom or engaged in distance learning. Having access to the highest quality and most culturally and socially relevant materials helps not only promote engagement but also allows students to see their own backgrounds and experiences reflected in the curriculum.
This project features a variety of growth mindset oriented books, as well as student copies for our beginning of the year read aloud, The One and Only Ivan.
These materials are instrumental in jump-starting our first cross-curricular unit about student-driven passion projects. Students will be invited to select topics of interest to research and create a writing project around that topic. We will examine identity, social issues, and critical-thinking skills as we engage in this work.
More than half of 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. Minas and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
