This week, we're helping to provide hands-on materials for lessons that integrate engineering and art in a Mississippi elementary school, as well as hydrology lessons for Honors Science students in a Georgia middle school. This is part of our ongoing effort to help fund science and math projects for public schools in low-income neighborhoods.
As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, an organization founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau.
Donations to today’s first project will be doubled because the lessons integrate Art & STEM: “Donations to this project are now being matched, thanks to support from an anonymous donor. The arts are an essential part of every child's education. An education in the arts makes children well-rounded, engaged, and active citizens of the world. This project has been supported in an effort to ensure that all students gain from the many benefits that arts education provides.”
MAIN PROJECT
Resources: My students need tinker toys, straw connectors and a roller coaster building kit.
School Poverty Level: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Ida Green Lower Elementary School, Belzoni, Mississippi
Total: $177.45 (donations matched by Anonymous Art & STEM Integration donor)
Still Needed: $157.45 Completed! Please consider projects below.
Expires: January 9, 2018
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Smith:
My Students: All of our school population receives free and reduced-price lunches (Title 1) and my children come from a high-poverty background. Many of my students come to school anxious, upset, sad and worried. I try to make my classroom a safe haven for them to be children and nothing more. Our classroom is full of kindness, creativity, and hope. Your donation will help students combine both the arts and STEM into our daily classroom routine. My students love hands on activities and both STEM and art instruction will help to engage them!
My Project: My students are excited by both STEM and art. My students this year have a passion for learning about engineering, specifically force and motion. When I asked my students what they would like to work on this year, they told me they wanted to build their own roller coasters. This was the perfect opportunity to fuse STEM and the arts together in our classroom. Students will use art supplies to design their roller coasters with a partner, thinking about the aesthetics of the design as well as the engineering behind it. They will then use tinker toys, straws and roller coaster kits to bring their design to life. They will then use their creation to test and see if it actually works! After the coaster has been completed they will work with art supplies to design a theme park, promotional materials and drawings of their design.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Donations to today’s environmental science project for Honors Science students will also be doubled: “Donations to this project are now being matched, thanks to support from Tom’s of Maine. The Tom’s of Maine Green Your School Fund is giving $1 million directly to classrooms so students can learn about the world around them.”
BONUS PROJECT
Resources: My students need graduated cylinders, markers, colored pencils, and a large inflatable globe to perform student centered learning investigations focusing on hydrology in the science classroom.
School Poverty Level: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Willie J. Williams Middle School, Moultrie, Georgia
Total: $558.00 (donations matched by Tom’s of Maine)
Still Needed: $259.45 Completed! Please consider projects below.
Expires: October 27, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Mr. Suber:
My Students: My middle school students are bright, gifted, and talented. They love hands on activities and labs. I try to create lessons that allow students to share, and become active members within the classroom. All students feel comfortable and share their thoughts in a nonthreatening environment. All of my students qualify and receive free breakfast and lunch each day. Even though many of my students are from low economic status, they love learning. They come to school excited, and ready to learn. The Honor's Science students that I teach need real world applications when learning our standards.
My Project: Middle school students need to complete student led discovery lessons within the content. In my science class, I would like for students to toss the inflatable globe, catch the globe, and identify whether their thumb is on land and water.
This active learning investigation will occur 100 times, and as a class, we will record each participant's data to compare the actual amount of land and water on Earth; students will use surface area blocks to count and see the correlation between the two types of data based on the amount of land and water on Earth.
Students will then use the graduated cylinders to model the different types of water, including salt water, frozen fresh water in the icecaps and glaciers, rivers, groundwater, etc.. Students will then create pie charts using the markers and color pencils to represent the water distribution data.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Update: We’ve already completed both of this morning’s projects — thanks to everyone! For those who come by later today, please consider 1) the project added below, suggested by GrowingMindsInSC, to provide high school algebra students with calculators; 2) the Harvey and Irma funds, also linked below. belinda ridgewood will be here next week with new projects!
ADDED PROJECT
Resources: My students need new and working calculators to help them in the classroom.
School Poverty Level: More than half of students from low‑income households
Location: Northwestern High School, Rock Hill, South Carolina
Total: $489.88 (match offer)
Still Needed: $171.06 Completed! Thank you.
Expires: November 29, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Jennings:
My Students: My Foundations of Algebra classes are full of struggling students that want to learn and be successful. Students spend the year learning the foundation of knowledge and skills that they need to move forward and be successful.
They are full of energy and take pride in their efforts to learn critical thinking and problem solving skills.
Many students are come from broken homes and low income families. Through the struggles, in my classroom, we focus on student growth and meeting their potential.
My Project: Having new calculators will provide my students with working technology to expand their knowledge and understanding of math. Calculators provide students with chances to level the playing field in the classroom. My students struggle daily with mathematical concepts.
Having working calculators provide my students with the opportunity to feel comfortable in their learning and to continue pushing through productive struggle in the classroom.
It is important for my students to have the opportunity to use the tools provided through the graphing calculator. Most of my students are unable to purchase a personal calculator and due to the lack of funding some may not have access to a calculator or have to share.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
DonorsChoose Hurricane Recovery Funds:
Help teachers rebuild their classrooms after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma
For those who would like to direct donations to schools in Texas, Louisiana. Florida, and other areas that were devastated by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, DonorsChoose has two special funds, 100% of which will be used for classroom projects from storm-impacted schools in their respective areas.
Their strategy is, DonorsChoose sends people in to help teachers identify their most urgent needs and set up specific projects. Then the amassed donations are used to immediately fund as many of the projects as possible. This has been successful in many past emergencies, such as Hurricane Sandy, Moore and Joplin OK tornadoes, and last year’s Louisiana flooding.
You can read more, and donate, at these links:
Thanks in large part to the generosity of our donors, whose donations were matched by Tom’s of Maine, both of last week’s projects were completed. Here is the thank you note for Little Einsteins Need Equipment!:
I created this project before I met my students. Now that I've met them, I'm even more sure that they will benefit profoundly from the items in this project. They are super curious and super smart, but need more exposure and resources. These items will help so much with that.
We are looking forward to projects, experiments, observations, and lots of discussion!
With gratitude,
Ms. Cotton
And for Quality Petrology:
Thank you for your generous donation to the materials for my classroom. The student will gain knowledge by touching, as well as looking at a real rock instead of pictures. This will make the difficult curriculum much easier for them to understand. Thank you again for your generosity. Please visit us anytime.
With gratitude,
Mrs. Graham
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 that 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 two science and math projects in red states, preferably in neighborhood public schools where most of the students come from low-income households. We welcome everyone who shares our interest — no money is required! Feel free to post a video, or just tell us about your weather.
Finally, here’s our list of successfully funded projects — our series total is 596! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.