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Ms. Greene from Richmond VA is requesting books through DonorsChoose, the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.

History Taught through Literature!

My students need history to be personalized and are in need of 2 class sets of novels, "Bud, Not Buddy" and "The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963" that make social studies come alive!

  • $395 goal

Hooray! This project is fully funded

Hooray! This project is fully funded

Celebrate Black Teachers and Students

This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.

My Students

Reading seems like a chore to many of my students, and to even more, social studies is viewed as a complete bore. Opinions will soon change with my new novel based curriculum! Christopher Paul Curtis creates historical characters that my students will be able to relate to and hopefully come to love.

I work in an urban middle school which serves a predominantly low-income and African-American community.

My students are sweet and caring individuals, but often struggle with remaining interested in or retaining information about material they feel is too far in the past. As a result, they unfortunately have a great deal of trouble relating to or valuing history/social studies. I wish to change that.

My Project

I am requesting classroom sets of the books "Bud, not Buddy" and "The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963" by Christopher Paul Curtis. These award winning books highlight the African-American struggle during the Great Depression and the Civil Rights movement through the eyes of middle school aged children. Studies show that cross-subject teaching styles are more beneficial to the students, because they are practicing more than one skill at a time. Likewise, research finds that students perform better and retain more information when they find the subject matter taught relative to their own lives. As such, I am creating a novel-based history class, where students can work on reading and writing while retaining core social studies concepts. Not only are Christopher Paul Curtis' books age-appropriate, but they feature African-Americans in important time periods. My students will hopefully be able to see themselves inserted into history and as a result, invest more in their social studies education.

Your donation will help a teacher, who is attempting to try out a new technique, keep the learning environment updated and interesting.

More importantly, African-American students desperately need to learn to see themselves reflected in American history, so that they can see the value in learning about our past. Hopefully, they will gain a new perspective on history. Also, my students reading and writing skills will improve with the added practice outside of their regular English class.

Ms. Greene
Grades 6-8

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Expand the "Where your donation goes" section below to see exactly what Ms. Greene is requesting.

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TEACHERS, FEELING INSPIRED?

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Where Your Donation Goes

Materials Cost Quantity Total
Bud, Not Buddy (Pbk) • AKJ Books $5.10 35 $178.50
The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 (MM) • AKJ Books $5.10 24 $122.40

Materials cost

$300.90

Vendor shipping charges

FREE

Sales tax

$0.00

3rd party payment processing fee

$4.51

Fulfillment labor & materials

$30.00

Total project cost

$335.41

Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

$59.19

Total project goal

$394.60

How we calculate what's needed

Total project goal

$394.60

2 Donors

-$197.30

Donations toward project cost

-$167.71

Donations to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

-$29.59

match offer

-$197.29

Match offer toward project cost

-$167.70

Match offer to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

-$29.59

Excluded support for DonorsChoose

-$0.01

Still needed View calculationHide calculation

$0.00

Our team works hard to negotiate the best pricing and selections available.

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Project Activity

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