Not a Minute To Waste!

Here's your opportunity to help some children in need! I am a third grade teacher in a public school in New York. This school is located in a lower socio-economic area in New York and most of the parents of these children are immigrants. A lot of the parents do not even know how to speak English. Almost all of the children are entitled to free breakfast and lunch every day in school. I have been teaching third grade for ten years and I absolutely love it. I am very fortunate because being at the elementary school level, I get to teach every subject area. These areas include mathematics, reading, writing, social studies and science.

The school is very big. About 1,100 students attend the school. For this reason, supplies for each subject area are limited. I try my best on my own to purchase as many supplies as I can, but this becomes very costly. Asking the parents for donations is not an option because many of the families already struggle for money. I want to teach these children to the best of my ability, but this requires some extra supplies which I currently do not have. My principal requires us to begin each day with a Problem of the Day in both reading/writing and math. Preparing this each day takes up a lot of time for both the children and myself. The children have to copy a problem from the board every day and then complete it. This sounds simple - doesn't it? However, it becomes a long, drawn out process each day because copying from the board is something that takes a VERY long time. So a five minute warm-up each day ends up to be a half hour lesson. The problem is that there isn't enough time in the school day to fit in each subject area as it is so this is just valuable time being wasted.

I recently came across a solution to this problem. Lakeshore Learning is a wonderful company which offers these fantastic daily practice journals. These journals are available in both reading and math. These journals are set up so that each day of the week the children just have to open up the books and the problems are already there waiting for them to complete. No more copying. No more wasted time. The best part is that there are enough problems in these books to last throughout the entire school year. I don't have to waste my time trying to locate problems that are just right for my students and they don't have to waste valuable learning time each morning. The journals will provide problems that are specifically for third graders so I don't have to worry that the content in the book may be too hard or too easy. These journals will make our day begin a lot smoother and help us to complete everything I have planned in a day.

Your donation will be a part of our entire school year and will really make a difference in our classroom every day. It will help me really be able to give my all to these children and enhance their learning experience in my classroom this year. Thank you in advance for your help and consideration with this matter.