This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
Being children of the instant info age, our kids are conditioned to typing into a search engine to find the answers required for projects. Using an actual reference book to look up information will become a lost skill if we don't keep up our supply of reference books for our classrooms.
Our students are low income kids with moms and dads doing their best to have the basic necessities in their homes.
Books are last on their list. Our kids are also very transient. If you pick up and move often, books are a burden. Having transportation to the nearest public library is not always a given. In any of these cases, if a book is purchased, it is not going to be an almanac, of all things! Reference books such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and almanacs don't find their way into the homes of our students.
Low income and in the situations these kids find themselves, they still love to learn and explore all things around them. Giving them opportunities and exposure to as many learning materials as possible is truly a great value to them.
My Project
When do the seasons change, and why? When is the next full moon? Will we have a snow day this year? When is Easter? Will the Fourth of July fireworks be rained out this year? Kids learn by exploring the answers for these questions in the Old Farmer's Almanac. Once they get a feel for how to use this reference tool, they go on to search for more information. Using this book leads them on to checking out information in other books, and becoming better readers, researchers, and analytical thinkers!
The Georgia CRCT requires third grade students to know what kind of information is found in an almanac and how to access that information.
The cost of having enough books for a class to use exceeds budgets for individual classrooms. Beyond that, providing them for the kids is not considered because the information is obsolete within a year. Students must learn what they can from copied 'worksheets' but these cannot take the place of hands on experience. We must find a way to get some almanacs!
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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. Coker and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.