My middle school students live in a small supportive community, however, their families are far from being affluent with over 50% qualifying for free and reduced lunch. Some are coming to school ready to fully engage, others have many real-life overwhelming obstacles to overcome before they can be ready to focus on learning.
They do, however, all love learning new things especially if they have the opportunity for hands-on projects and creativity.
My students enjoy independent work as well as team collaboration opportunities. I am adding more robotics and coding to my curriculum to help my students be engaged learners today, innovators, and future leaders tomorrow.
My Project
First, this DonorsChoose project will help to ensure that my robotic teams will have "back-up" power to endure the rigors of my students' coding challenges. My classes have 18-25 students; each grade level rotates with 60 minute block periods every other day. Even with our current 8 LEGO Mindstorm EV3 Education sets, we are still mostly tripling up some of the teams.
Second, having a #9 LEGO Mindstorm EV3 Education Core kit will empower us to have teams of 2 in some of my classes; with a goal to continue to work toward having a total of 12 kits to meet our needs in all my classes.
It is recommended that we use 1 EV3 kit for two students.
My newly expanded robotic/coding curriculum will be put to the test this trimester. I am working with the 8th graders this term and they are quite excited to build upon the robot building and coding sampling they did last year. They are also looking forward to designing and 3D printing an EV3 "accessory".
I cannot wait to see my students' creativity as they collaborate and expand their critical thinking skills as they design and program with grit and growth mindset.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. McCarthy and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
