I hope to make our students excited about STEM this year and in years to come by providing exciting activities. Due to the high poverty rate, our school supplies both breakfast and lunch to all students. Poverty is also the reason that our students don't get the opportunity to leave this small city making the experiences we bring them in the classroom all the more important. Our students include a range of abilities. We have gifted and talented students as well as students identified with learning disabilities. Our middle school services grades 6 through 8. There are approximately 1000 students in the middle school.
Students have been given a choice in their elective courses and my STEM related courses are becoming more popular.
I have worked hard to create classes packed with STEM content that students would be excited to take. I have had a great response to my courses-students want to be involved in STEM! In the past, students have been very motivated and focused when involved in hands-on activities. For this reason, I have tried to create daily hands-on inquiry lessons.
My Project
I have a wide range of STEM students. I have students who compete in robotics as well as special needs students who love doing hands-on robotics activities, but they often need guidance and tasks broken into distinct steps. Robotics team members are required to document their engineering process in a notebook. The color printer will aid in their documentation by allowing them to print out pictures of their actual robot for the notebook. This notebook will then be evaluated by engineers at a competition where students compete for trophies and chances to attend future competitions at the state and world level.
The Dot and Dash robots and the Snap Circuit kit will give the first time robotic students opportunities to learn about STEM topics in a fun and engaging way.
The Snap Circuit offers instructions which if followed correctly result in a complete circuit which causes something to happen such as a propeller launching. The Dot and Dash robots introduce students to programming by allowing them to give these cute robots a personality plus command their activity.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. T. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.