My students need creative art-type supplies such as poster board, glue, scissors, markers, whiteboards and construction paper for writing enhancement projects.
This English classroom is about enhancing learning through individual learning styles, including working individually and in a group. At the end of the year I want to have creative, independent workers, who can also work cooperatively. The biggest challenge is lack of creative supplies.
My students are amazing, creative 7th graders who thirst for knowledge more than any other group I have had before them.
Thanks to a variety of surveys we have taken, they are becoming self-aware learners who have expressed to me that they learn best when working creatively and cooperatively. They are energetic seventh graders who discuss issues diplomatically and have enjoyed working together on group projects and have started to figure out how to disagree agreeably! We are a Midwestern medium-sized town with rural, farm-working values. Our district emphasizes educating students to be citizenship ready, college ready, and career ready. With almost 600 students in our school, we see some pretty hefty class sizes, but this group of 7th graders are so enjoyable to teach, class size is a non-issue. And because I try to orchestrate my classroom to meet their learning styles, our class hours fly by.
My Project
I am a middle school teacher with an elementary background. I have found that even middle school students like to get their hands dirty and work on creative projects. Our district has been focusing on high technology integration, so it is easy to forget about the importance of hands-on learning. I have restructured my classroom this year to provide more creative outlets for the students. Making posters, making projects, and illustrating their essays are just a few of the ideas I hope to implement this year. I have already tried one project and found that the students did great work with a poster board and a marker. I am excited to dream about what they can accomplish with a full range of artistic supplies. The classroom content they will learn will be grammar and 6-trait writing based. But the lifelong content I hope they learn is how to have fun learning and how to work cooperatively whether you pick your group or your teacher (or boss) picks your group.
Students learn by listening, seeing, moving, artistically, musically, individually, in a group and more.
The funds used to purchase these art supplies will improve the classroom environment and by extension students lives because it will get us out of the typical lecture style classroom and get students talking, listening to each other, working together and creating artistic projects all the while learning grammar, vocabulary and writing.
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