"Look! I did it!" a student exclaimed after writing his name for the first time. "Octopus!" a student, who is mostly nonverbal, exclaimed while reading an adapted text. As a teacher in a low-income area of NC to special needs students, I am astounded every day by the progress my students make and their overwhelming desire to learn. They have needs ranging from speech to autism to spina bifida and more, but they are all unique in their own way, and they all learn in different ways.
My students are three, four, and five, and they face challenges every day that they fight to overcome so they can learn and grow.
Each student has an Individualized Education Program (IEP), and they come to school to work on goals related to speech, communication, social skills, behavior, and more. Many of these students also come from low income families and receive a variety of services designed to help them, such as speech, occupational, and/or physical therapy. These students overcome hurdles every day, and they teach me every day as well to be a better teacher and to adapt materials in different ways to meet their needs.
My Project
My students are all working to establish a functional grasp. Many of them have difficulty with their fine motor skills, and they need assistance to access these classroom activities. They need functional grasp support as well as a variety of adaptations to the materials that we already have.
Many of my students are striving to engage in writing and art tasks, but they require adapted materials to be able to access these activities.
We are asking for mushroom stampers, knob handled paint brushes, and pattern stampers to help my students independently access art and craft activities. These materials all have the chunky handles or knob tops that allow my students to utilize their entire hand to grip the painting or stamping utensil. We are also requesting aqua-flo brushes because my students struggle to independently paint using water colors without knocking the cups over. These brushes allow the paint to be added directly to the brush, so that my students can use them. We are also asking for thermal pouches (legal size) and velcro dots. These materials will be used to create visual schedules for the students to know what activities come next in their day.
We also recently began a curriculum that requires a tablet. My students require styluses to be able to access the tablet, as they do not have the fine motor development or coordination to access with an isolated finger. The programs on the tablet will build both their writing, language, and literacy activities, so it is really important that we have styluses that they can use to access the programs.
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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. Newton and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
