My school is located in an urban area. The school has a projected enrollment of 368 students for the 16-17 year in grades TK-5, with fifteen classrooms. Additionally, we house a state pre-K program. Ninety two point five percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and 48% are English Language Learners. Forty six percent of the students are Latino, 35% are African-American, 10% are Asian, and 3% are Filipino.
The school has established a culture of continuous school improvement and has a team of teachers, parents, and administrators who are committed to creating the best possible learning environment for students.
Teachers meet weekly for a sixty minute period during the workday in their professional learning community to analyze student performance data, set goals, and share instructional strategies. These teacher teams follow a developed agenda and use protocols and defined roles to manage the meetings. These meetings are my school's cornerstone for building a professional learning community and improving student achievement.
My Project
I am the Math Common Core Teacher Leader at our site, so I work with all teachers and grade levels. Our teachers have worked hard this year to refine their practice when it comes to teaching Mathematics. We are working towards an inquiry-based culture in which students engage in productive struggle, academic discourse, and performance tasks in order to become problem solvers, collaborators, communicators, and owners of the Mathematics. We believe that this will put them on the path to college and career readiness.
We want our students to have a place to continually express their mathematical thinking, share their thoughts with others, and reflect on their thinking over time.
In order to facilitate this, we need notebooks for all of our Kindergarten and 1st grade students. We want our students to move away from the 'cookie cutter' Math of their district-provided workbooks. We want them drawing models, writing out numbers and equations, and writing reflections in their own words, pictures, and ideas. We don't want them just filling in blanks and circling answers!
Please help us to put our students first and build a good foundation as independent thinkers and mathematicians. This project would serve multiple classrooms and provide notebooks for all our Kindergarten and first grade students.
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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. Kemp and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
