My students need materials to keep our math rotations organized, productive, and fun! Our math activities are slowed down each day by things like broken playing card boxes, and less-than-ideal storage solutions for worksheets!
Teaching in a high-needs, Title I school, my students are often faced with challenges outside of the classroom. They are often unable to access technology outside of school hours for various reasons, including both socio-economic status and stressful family situations.
My goal is to do my part in closing the achievement gap within my own district by providing students with opportunities to be fully exposed to and excited about all of their academic content.
I also aim to help them see the relevance to them!
Most of my students qualify for free or reduced price lunch due to their family's socioeconomic status. This means their stresses outside of the classroom are regarding more basic needs. This puts them at a disadvantage in their early lives, to their peers competing for college admissions and eventually, jobs down the road.
I think exposing my students to extra opportunities to focus on academic topics outside of the classroom (or content specific times) will help to even the playing field. Although they can't necessarily find these moments on their own, I hope to provide them within our school community!
They are hardworking, motivated and engaged in any content I present to them!
My Project
These materials will be put to use right away in our classroom! We do math rotations each day wherein students rotate through activities with a small group of their classmates who are working on similar skills. Students have done a great job this year learning to do the rotations and being responsible for their own learning when they are not at the rotation where there is a teacher! Since we do these rotations every day, it has become clear where we lose focus or waste time.
We need organization for our math materials that will help us to have more learning time, and less wasted time during math each day!
Although playing cards are great for math games of all sorts, the standard boxes they come in simply don't hold up with everyday 4th grade use. File folders are also not very 4th grade-friendly so these drawers will help students quickly find the work they need so they can spend more time practicing skills and less time looking through files or piles of papers. Finally, since students are still developing handwriting skills, these dry erase markers will help them to write clearly and keep track of their work as they solve complex problems.
All of these materials will support the ultimate goal of our math rotations: for students to become ready for more responsibility in the future for both their learning and ability to seek out resources when needed.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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