Our school serves students in grades 6-8 and provides rigorous academics that include learning using project based learning, where students learn the curriculum by completing projects. This allows our students to have a voice and possibly change the world. Our students are extremely differentiated and many of them receive free and reduced price lunch but are still inspired daily by our incredible teachers. Our goal is to prepare students for real life situations that they may experience once they leave school.
My Project
My students are in dire need of technology in our classroom; we use it daily. They need it even for the simplest concept of learning how to correctly research topics to be able to debate in my room.
I recently had my students do a Crime Scene that had to do with biomes and the characters from Zootopia.
The person who had done the crime was Flash from Zootopia. The activity had some wonderful clues about different facts about sloths. My students were engrossed in trying to solve the crime and I found them having debates about the adaptations of all the animals that it could have been. They ended up needing to research each animal to see if the clues actually worked for them. My students who had smart phones were the only ones who were able to look up the information.
Having access to devices daily would complete change the way students are learning in my classroom. I use devices to take away from me being the one teaching the material and instead letting my students focus on their literacy skills to be able to determine the information. With these devices, I would be able to teach my classes using QR codes for students to have a mass amount of resources available to them. I could also teach using web quests for the students to learn information verses me presenting another boring power point.
This allows me to not spend my time lecturing but instead pull small groups for checking for mastery. The struggle is that I am not the only teacher in the school who is looking to use technology to inspire their students. Signing up for the school technology is a battle that could resolved if I had devices at my student's fingertips.
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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. Cushanick and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
