My students need a dry erase easel to be used during their Math Rotations.
$320 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.
Are you a visual learner? Do you need to see things up close and in living color to help you understand? My students are budding mathematicians who work very hard to master challenging concepts in an over-crowded classroom that is in desperate need of more whiteboard space to display visuals.
My students are hard-working, motivated young mathematicians who face a lot of challenges every day.
Our school is Title 1 and many of my students are English Language Learners. They come from diverse backgrounds and family situations that can make learning difficult, but they work hard as a team to master challenging 4th grade math concepts.
Our school building was constructed in 1968 and has been expanded and updated a number of times since then. However, our classrooms are small and still have their original chalkboards. Since the chalkboards are scratched and peeling, most teachers just use them as extra bulletin board space. Most classrooms do have a whiteboard in addition to the chalkboard, but one whiteboard is often not enough space to record important lesson information.
In addition to the outdated presentation space, our classrooms are very over-crowded this year. My 4th grade classroom is currently home to 57 students, 27 in our morning group and 28 in the afternoon!
My Project
In my classroom, math is a community activity. Instead of whole group lessons, we break into 3 smaller groups to allow my 29 students to have more individual attention. Our ESOL teacher, my intern teacher, and I each lead a small group and the children rotate between us.
Since many of my students are not native English speakers, they often struggle with content vocabulary words. Whenever possible, our ESOL teacher and I provide students with a concrete image of a concept to aid their understanding. This is frequently done on our TV screen or overhead, but by far, the tool we use the most is our dry erase board at the front of the classroom.
The trouble is, only one small group can use our main whiteboard. The other two teachers must use small personal whiteboards about the size of textbooks to illustrate concepts for the kids. This is cumbersome since the teacher must hold the little whiteboard while writing on it. The small size also makes it hard for some students to see.
Our students are already facing a multitude of academic and social challenges.
The lack of space for visual aids makes it that much harder for me to instruct them and help them succeed. Having another portable whiteboard would make our math group meetings more efficient and comprehensible for all of my 29 mathematicians. (Although admittedly, they might miss giggling at my awkward fumbling!)
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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. Burden and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.