My students need a shortwave UV light to show how fluorescent minerals can glow and be identified.
$274 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
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.
Identifying fluorescent minerals would be a lot easier with UV vision. Unfortunately, humans lack that ability and my students require a shortwave UV light to see the fluorescent glow of certain rocks and minerals.
My students are 10th graders currently taking Earth Science.
They attend an inner city public school with a student body of about 1300. We are one of four small learning communities within the school. The majority of students come from immigrant parents in a working class neighborhood.
My Project
The great thing about science is there are endless ways to engage and capture students' attention. A required component of New York's Earth Science assessment is knowing how to identify rocks and minerals. To teach the lesson, I'd like to use inquiry and spark an interest for rocks. I own samples of fluorescent minerals and rocks, such as Willemite and Wollastonite. However, without a shortwave UV light, the students cannot experience the engaging act of seeing fluorescent minerals glow. This process is important for geologists when trying to identify unknown rocks and minerals. I would like my students to learn as if they are real geologists and use the same type of identification tools.
Students come to school and find the classes and work "boring." They dread sitting through lectures and listening to teachers talk.
I try to create a different experience in my science classroom. Science is about discovery and finding interesting natural phenomena. A UV light showing glowing minerals will not only surprise students, but turn a "boring" topic such as rocks, into an interesting one. Students will be able to identify rocks and minerals as if they were real life geologists.
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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. Lee and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
