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
Can you imagine being a parent of a child with speech and language impairment? If you did, I am sure you would do whatever possible to help maximize your child's skills. Children with speech and language impairment often find school challenging, and living in a low SES community makes it harder.
I am a speech language pathologist working in a kindergarten through 8 grade New York City Public School.
All of my students have IEPs and receive speech and language related services to enhance their receptive, expressive, pragmatic, phonemic awareness, and articulation skills. My students find school challenging because of their speech and language impairments. They often need additional supports, beyond speech and language therapy, to meet all academic goals. In addition, my students often do not enter kindergarten with the fundamental skills that other children come to school with. This is often related to lack of parent support at home, being raised in a broken home, and/or being in a low socioeconomic community. Many of my children do not come to school knowing their letters, have limited vocabulary, and have been around other children. Therefore, they are already behind other children who come to school from a more supportive environment.
My Project
I am requesting a laptop for my students because I work in a room with 4 other therapists. A laptop would be most convenient to have so I can bring it to my table. A laptop allows the students to have exposure to technology with the use of phonemic awareness games, vocabulary based activities, and researching. Being that I work with a broad range of students (k - 8th grade), the laptop would serve a variety of purposes. The older students would use the laptop for researching and finding resources to write essays and research papers. The primary grades would use the laptop to help them build the fundamental skills that they did not come to school with. The last reason why the laptop is essential is exposure. These students need to learn technology so they are ready for the world. I also added three language based activities. One activity is used for phonemic awareness skills, to help with literacy development. The last item is a multiple meanings activity to expand vocabulary.
This project is essential for all of my students because they will become more confident.
Working in the small group setting with a speech language pathologist gives students many teachable moments. Having the resources such as, a laptop and new speech activities, will help the students to learn fundamental skills. It will also help students with their academic classes (e.g., researching a history paper). This project will give students exposure to technology that they are not getting at home.
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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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 Ms. Giannetta and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
