Listening Center and Some Thank You Notes!

Who doesn’t love Donors Choose?  My coteachers and I have enjoyed many wonderful classroom resources funded by the generosity of Donors Choose donors.  We have a very active parent community, but not everyone can donate lots of money so this website is a great way for us to rally together a lot of parents who can only donate a small amount of money and together they can fund the project.  We’ve also gotten lots of money from generous donors we don’t know whose care for my students is so appreciated and I wish they could see how much the kids LOVE what they have given us.

Most recently, my coteacher and I had a Donors Choose gift card burning a hole in our pockets so we posted a listening center project with a iPod, listening library, headphone splitter, and classroom set of headphones.  We had a few donors who we appreciate, but one extremely generous donor paid for more than half of the project and so my dear little kindergarteners were writing her thank you notes to show their appreciation.

You can see that even this task was differentiated (because we don’t really have any assignments that aren’t differentiated!).  Some notes had pre-written sentence starters to reduce writing demands and some were blank to offer more creativity in the students’ responses. We also provided a variety of art materials (stickers, dot markers, crayons, etc.) so that students could all create a beautiful card even if they don't feel strong in their drawing abilities.

Among all of the many state and common core standards, in the middle of our reading curriculum and math curriculum, between preparing for the carnival and preparing for student led conferences - it was so wonderful to take some time out to teach the kids to be grateful when other people do wonderful things for us.  The kids couldn't believe that this woman named "Deborah" would care so much about them as to buy all of these great supplies.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Adie