I am a full-time teacher in the REACH program, which is a self-contained special education program that currently has six students. The REACH program is an intensive, specialized program that is focused on increasing student learning, engagement and behavior using a multi-sensory, multi-faceted approach. The focus of the classroom is reading and mathematics along with social skills and self-advocacy.
My position is unique and I am very fortunate because I have been teaching the same group of students for three years now.
This allows me to know and understand my students' needs very well. I am able to see their academic, behavior and social gains and they have made so much progress! I have taken a group of multi-age, multi-grade students and fostered a classroom culture that encourages acceptance, fosters independence, develops friendships and creates a love for learning.
My students love to learn with hands-on approaches, using manipulatives to demonstrate understanding. They love to use high-interest readers to learn about topics. I use an approach of hands-on learning as much as possible in my classroom.
My Project
My classroom is a self-contained classroom for special education students, meaning my students are in the classroom throughout the entire school day except for Physical Education. My students have a split lunch where some students go to lunch while others remain in the classroom until it is their time to go to lunch. Because of that, my classroom aide or I often eat lunch in the classroom while students are present. Being such a busy classroom, it is the only time of day that we are able to eat lunch.
We have monthly incentives where students earn an AR party if they have been reading their independent reading books and earning passing grades on the comprehension tests.
Students bring snacks and a drink from home to and celebrate with a movie in the afternoon. I always bring popcorn. It would be safer and more convenient if we could pop the popcorn in the classroom instead of having to find coverage for someone else to watch the classroom while I go to the kitchen and pop popcorn for the students.
We also celebrate in the classroom a lot with food items. We do a yearly butter making, ice cream making, and other agriculture related projects that it would really benefit us to have these things in the classroom. This project would make our classroom more self-sufficient.
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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. Yates and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
