Middle schoolers are a unique bunch. We have bubbly, energetic 6th graders who want to be active learners. Our students and our school are located in a low socio-economic and high poverty area of town. We want to provide them with engaging activities.
They deserve to have technological enrichment activities and an exciting curriculum even though they are surrounded by poverty.The majority of our students have free and reduced lunch.
In spite of the difficulties they face in their lives they still come to school ready and willing to dive in. For the most part, they have heart and are fearless. It is an honor for me to have these resilient youngsters in my classes. Our school budget has been reduced substantially and we hope to continue to provide our students with challenging academic activities.
My Project
We have a terrific principal who wrote up grants so our students could use 1:1 Chromebooks at our school enabling each student to use a Chromebook laptops during class. So I was motivated to purchased voki avatar: a terrific program to get kids excited about researching and writing. After researching the information on one of the ancient river valley civilizations, they write scripts as if they are the leader of the civilization. Students write in the first person point of view taking the perspective of the king or emperor of the civilization as they create a talking avatar.
To help students concentrate, earbuds for each student would be helpful and an external drive to save their work to create portfolio disc with for our SLC (student led conferences).
Some of our students who have difficulty concentrating would be able to stay focused more easily with earbuds on.
The challenge students are facing is that when students want to work independently, they are disturbed by the sound coming from the other computers.
Using earbuds to help block out noise to create their avatars would greatly support their efforts as they can focus on their avatar projects.
As a social studies teacher, I use digital lessons to have scholars interact with their learning which otherwise would not be accessible in a traditional classroom environment (e.g. creating virtual reality digital field trips and avatars to present their research) Their focus on these tasks is essential for them to engage authentically with the material. With these headphones, my scholars will be more equipped to hone in on their learning! The external disc saves their work.
By donating to our classroom projects, you will not only help to support student engagement, you will ultimately help to increase their academic achievement.
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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. T. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
