I am a current second grade teacher in a school district with students that have goals in academics, however have limited resources in grasping them. Families in our community typically struggle to make ends meet. More than seventy percent of our students receive free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch daily, which is calculated based on income.
In the past years, I have worked with many students coming from environments of lower socio-economic status and limited to prior knowledge and accessibility to resources.
These students struggle with learning the way other students in the classroom may learn. Visual and hands-on materials as well as a flexible classroom space can assist in academic improvement and in forming connections. The use of videos can also encourage the building of vocabulary and about topics they have limited knowledge about due to not having opportunities to experience them.
Along with students of a lower socio-economic environments, I also work regularly with students of increased academic needs. These students can be on specialized plans that are set to meet their academic needs (IEPs). These students usually require special needs and with that, many times the information taught in the classroom needs to be introduced differently.
My Project
My students are in second grade and with that many are still trying to get organized and find their own ways with the process. For this reason, I would like to assist them in organizing their supplies with individual drawers available in the classroom. A drawer can offer a student space to put all the “extra” supplies for writing/brainstorming and STEM activities so that they are easy to acquire yet out of the way for daily instruction. Right now I see many of my students trying to make sense of messy desks. The end of the day tends to be spent picking up these supplies as they fall out of desks and end up on floors. By having a drawer, they can go over to it, while working individually or with others, and get what is needed for the task. We do a lot of STEM learning, so materials such as a ruler, a calculator, or even their mini notebooks for note taking could be housed in these drawers!
Students need the flexible options in the room to allow for collaboration and inquiry learning.
Therefore, I also think that our carpet space should be open for learning and with an easel that is compact, it enables for easy set up and take down with little time. The less space an easel takes, the more space available for group work and spreading out students! We definitely need an easel for big books too- as we use a big book each week from the Fountas and Pinnell read aloud curriculum.
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