Our Achieve program is a combination of 3rd and 4th grade students. Many students hold the academic strengths to participate within a general education classroom, but sometimes they need a bit of extra support.
Much of our student support works within our growth mindset and building student confidence—We know they can do the work, but they don’t quite realize it yet.
YET. This is our favorite classroom word. It may be difficult and we don’t quite understand YET, but that’s why we are learning together. We work on our mindset that even though assignments are difficult, we use our basic knowledge or schema, to build on and learn new things. We often remind our students, “Use what you know to help figure out what you don’t know.” Each time, they smile back at us and persevere through the assignment.
When our assignments are completed, you can see the pride and confidence of our students beaming off the page. It’s a friendly, heart-warming reminder why we became teachers.
My Project
Poetry is often a difficult unit for students to understand, and often the least favorite for teachers to explore in the classroom.
When reading Love That Dog, our students can follow the daily thoughts of a young boy, Jack, who has recently lost his beloved pet while learning figurative language.
Jack has his own frustrations with poetry, and his teacher continues to push him to explore and express his thoughts and feelings on paper. Before he knows it, Jack is surprising himself and writing poetry with ease.
Through the use of our study guides, students will reflect on their own similarities with Jack and build their own poetry. While working through daily, prompted questions, students will explore their own reactive feelings to a variety of situations. Our goal is to not only explore the fundamentals of poetry with our students, but also allow them to use poetry to help express their own feelings, hopes, and frustrations.
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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. Keeler and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.