Welcome to The Inoculation Project! This week, we're helping to fund a Maker Space for a Texas elementary school library and STEM activities for a first-grade class in Georgia. As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, an organization founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. If you’re short on cash, don’t worry — we’re glad to see you anyway! And your tips, recs, shares, and so on are a good free way to help, by helping us get on the rec list and catch more eyes. Join us below for all the fun!
THIS WEEK’S PROJECT
Resources: My students need STEM activities! We need Legos, KNEX, and buildable circuits to create a maker space for students in the library.
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: Thomas Tolbert Elementary School, Dallas, Texas
Total: $360.00
Still Needed: $210.00 $75.59
Expires: December 28, 2016
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Watts:
My Students: Our school is a wonderful place to be!
We are an urban, 98% Free and Reduced lunch, 99% minority elementary school.
Many of them are unable to afford the items necessary for school, or any kind of special enrichment beyond the school day. Although they cannot bring some basic necessities with them to school, they do bring with them joy and a desire to learn each and every day! We want to take this joy of learning and expose them to different activities with the hopes of them finding what they want to do when they are adults.
My Project: We are trying to expose our students to different STEM activities while flexing their creativity muscles. We are requesting Legos so that students can be creative and build things they want to build and combine with other building sets. We are requesting KNEX so that students can work with pulleys, connectors, etc to get even more in-depth practice building and creating. Finally, we are requesting circuits so that students can complete circuit activities to better understand how circuits and electricity work. When combined with the activities we already have, we will have a variety of different STEM activities for our students to enjoy.
These activities will expose our students to a new world of possibilities for their future!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
This week, I chose to feature two relatively small projects. This next one has a matching offer, so we should be able to help complete it quickly.
MATCHING OFFER PROJECT
Resources: My students need Legos, tangrams, and manipulatives to complete STEM activities.
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: Hapeville Elementary School, Hapeville, Georgia
Total: $529.85
Still Needed: $141.85 Completed! Thank you.
Expires: Jan 31, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Powell:
My Students: My first-grade classroom is a place of creativity and excitement. Students spend this school year learning the foundational reading and writing skills that will make them successful in upper elementary school. Students spend first grade learning to read so that they can read to learn.
My students are first graders in an urban Georgia Title I elementary school and receive 100% free breakfast and lunch.
Many of the students are second language learners and are from many different cultural backgrounds. They are eager to learn and love to move and explore.
My Project: In my first grade classroom, I focus on building critical thinking skills and developing my students as mathematicians and scientists. We need math manipulatives like coins and base tens blocks in order to develop number sense concepts like place value and skip counting to count coins.
My students need Legos and Tangrams to build critical thinking skills.
Students will complete engineering tasks with the Lego sets. We need ink cartridges to print in color the STEM activities for our classroom centers. We also need a binding machine to organize material pages for use during centers. We will use the zipper pouches to organize our materials.
Last week’s museum trip project is already completed! Here’s the teacher’s thank-you note:
Thank you all so much for you contributions! In only a few days we went from not being sure if we'd be able to take a field trip at all to having everything we'll need for an amazing trip to the Liberty Science Center. The students are so excited for this opportunity - you have no idea how much it'll mean to them. We'll be sure to send pictures and letters along as soon as we get back from the trip!! :-)
With gratitude, Mr. Ryan
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project is an effort to combat the anti-science push in conservative America by providing direct funding to science and math projects in traditionally red-state classrooms and libraries. Our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, an organization founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. DonorsChoose allows you to contribute to specific, vetted projects in public schools, resulting in tremendous and immediate impacts from small-dollar donations. Here’s an introductory video about DonorsChoose featuring Michelle Obama and Stephen Colbert.
Each Sunday morning, we focus on helping to fund one or two science and math projects in traditionally red-state schools, preferably in highest-poverty districts. We welcome everyone who shares our interest — no money is required! Your tip, rec, republish, comment, or share helps bring us more eyes, and besides, we like the company of others who love kids and education. Feel free to post a link or video, or just tell us how your weather is!
Finally, here’s our list of successfully funded projects — our series total is 533! The success-list diary now also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose, formerly found in this space.