My students need to a Qball, a microphone embedded in a ball, to help engage them in classroom discussions.
$264 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My students are 9th graders in a large, urban neighborhood school. Almost all students come from low income households and are bilingual. They are part of a selective group of students in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Program. My students are curious and motivated to be successful in life. All of them aspire to attend college, many of them would be the first in their family to do so. Many of my students don't have role models in their personal lives that can guide them to be successful in college and challenging careers.
Therefore, in my classroom, I focus on skills that can help my students achieve their dreams.
Being reflective, thinkers, and communicators are some of the characteristics that the IB program hopes to build in students. The program also focuses on student growth. Our school is in the process of transitioning over to competency-based learning. This means we are moving in a direction of helping students personalize their learning in order to learn to their potential. Therefore, while mastery of skills is evaluated, growth, and reflection are also important criteria when determining the success of a student.
My Project
Every class period is started off with a question and students writing down their answer, to get them thinking about the day's topic. Two students then lead a discussion where students share out their answers. This year I have a few classes where not too many students are willing to raise their hand, which means the lead students have to cold call on the other students. These discussions can end up being pretty passive and not engaging sometimes. There are a fair number of students who do not like to speak loudly either when they are called upon. I think the QBall would be a great way to liven up the discussion and to help make sure that student voices are heard. Having the possibility of a ball being thrown at them, automatically will make the students be more aware of the discussion going on around them and make everyone on their toes, to be ready to participate.
Adding an element of fun to learning never hurts!
There are many other class activities that I do throughout the year where class discussion is part of the activity. The Qball could be a great way to hear student voices during those activities as well.
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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. Castro-McLaughlin and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.