In order to keep my 28 6-year-olds learning, I must keep the learning new and interesting. In my first grade classroom, there is constant movement and chatter. Students work in small groups, in partners and one-on-one. They can work at tables, on the floor, on computers..whatever meets their needs.
Our school is in a small town of nearly 3,000 residents and is the only elementary school in the district.
It has over 60% of its students receiving free and reduced lunches.
I have 28 first grade students and am challenged every day to try to meet their diverse needs on my own. My students come from a variety of backgrounds... 44% Hispanic, 56% White; 33% of my students are learning English as a second language, often lacking common classroom language to be able to understand/participate in lessons taught in the classroom.
I have 4 students that are more than a year below grade-level in math, and 3 students that are more than 6 months above grade level in math. The rest of the students are all somewhere in between.
My Project
Students of today are immersed in technology, even at 6 years old. They often know how to work their mom's cell phones to play Angry Birds, how to shuffle through hundreds of channels on the television to find their favorite shows and how to navigate a search engine to get to their favorite online game site. My job is to broaden their knowledge of technology and use online sources to enhance their learning experiences.
Due to the older technology available in my classroom, the students and I are often frustrated while trying to troubleshoot issues that the computers are having, instead of using the technology to learn. There are multiple learning sites that I assign to students each day which allow the students to practice newly learned skills in a game setting. The kids get so hooked on the game that they often forget that they are learning! One math website, in particular, allows me to change the skills and level of difficulty for each student and monitor their progress.
If my project is funded, it would allow us to use the technology as a teaching tool, instead of giving us a headache!
My students could work on math concepts at their level and have fun doing it. My higher-leveled kids could extend their learning beyond the first grade curriculum, while I assist others that need extra teacher time. My lower-leveled kids could use them to get the repetitious math fact practice that has been shown to raise their overall math scores into the latter grades.
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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 Mrs. Winslow and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.