Welcome to The Inoculation Project! This week, we're finishing a big project to help North Carolina elementary students keep science journals, and starting a new one to bring Idaho high schoolers small white boards for graphing equations. 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!
Since our previous long-term project is so close to completion (with matching funds), I am moving it up here and choosing a new long-term project below.
THIS WEEK’S MAIN PROJECT
Resources: My students need science journals for daily practice and review, ready to go centers, and science station materials for hands on exploration!
School Poverty Level: Highest
Location: Longview Elementary School, Hickory, North Carolina
Total: $624.15 (matching offer)
Still Needed: $109.15 COMPLETED! Please consider long-term project, below.
Expires: June 22, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Snider:
My Students: I work for a Title One school with a 100% free lunch rate. My students are 33% African American, 33% English Language Learners, and 34% white, Asian, and other diverse populations.
We are in a small inner city system and many of my students come to school with few supplies to begin learning.
These students are strong, capable learners who need to be able to be competitive with their peers for 21st century jobs in the future. Sometimes my students have been overlooked or don't try due to a fear of failure in not having what other students have access to. They give up easier on themselves because they don't feel they are as good as their same aged peers due to a lack of experiences and opportunities in the technological world.
My Project: Scientists need materials to experiment with and journals to keep their notes of discovery. With limited copies per month, science typically goes on the back burner or we have limited use of shared materials. I am requesting these hands on science activities, ready to be used science kits, reusable supplies, and daily science practice journals, students can organize data and keep their experiments close at hand for daily review of skills. Scientists must be able to witness changes and be able to use multiple materials in more than one setting. I am requesting science file folder games, review station materials, journals with science prompts and experiments for daily practice and review, and a complete set of science centers that are ready to be used with no extra materials needed!
Students will be able to interact with hands on manipulatives especially for our most important units-animals, environmental changes that affect plants and animals, and reading resources for non-fiction text review.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
So that we can help both small and large projects, we usually present a relatively modest project each week, then feature a more ambitious project with a long-term deadline. As we chip away at the long-term project, our activity can also help push that project up DonorsChoose’s equivalent of our “rec list”, so it is shown to more donors outside Daily Kos. In that way, we can help finish projects that may be beyond our means when only our own dollars are considered.
LONG-TERM PROJECT
Resources: My students need dry-erase double-sided whiteboards (one side plane white, the other the X-Y coordinate grid) to practice graphing in math class and they need measuring tape to help with measuring non-linear items.
School Poverty Level: High
Location: Ridgevue High School, Nampa, Idaho
Total: $378.54
Still Needed: $378.54 $119.72
Expires: July 15, 2017
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Alley:
My Students: I am a high school math teacher who wants to make Math come alive through hands-on and visual activities. My goal is to have all of my students make sense of math.
My school’s motto is “Above the Best” and we are committed to creating positive learning experiences in order for our students to be “Above the Best.”
My students are 9 - 12th graders from a Title One school. They come from challenging backgrounds and most are fighting uphill battles. As a school, we are committed to students’ success in school and in the future.
My Project: An expert in any field becomes an expert through practice. My students would greatly benefit from having their own individual double-sided dry-erase board to practice and sharpen their math skills. One side of the board is plain white for solving equations or making annotations to build a graph. The second side is emblazoned with the X-Y Coordinate Grid so students can graph the many equations encountered in all Math classes.
Students can practice graphing mathematical equations on the dry-erase boards.
These boards are much easier to see than in a notebook and therefore, I, as the teacher, am more able to correct misconceptions and steer students to a better understanding of the Mathematical material.
The second items requested are measuring tapes. My students explore in my Math classroom. The measuring tapes would allow students a more precise way to measure non-linear items.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
If you are unfamiliar with the original song and curious: NSFW.
Last week, we finished our main project, Fizzing, Popping, Color Changing Science Experiments. Ms. Hill’s Philadelphia third graders, many of them English learners, will be able to work together on a series of exciting science projects that do cool stuff!
Thank you so much for your support. Because of your donations I can bring hands-on science experiments to my students. I can't wait to see their faces light up when they conduct their own experiments. They will have the opportunity to make predictions and create hypotheses based on their own experiments. Thank you for bringing science to our classroom.
Our Dollars at Work
In January, we helped Ms. Sergeant’s Michigan first graders with materials to build simple weather instruments and do some related projects (of which “tornadoes in a jar” excited them most!) From the project Steamy Weather. (More photos at the link.)
Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity. My children always are excited to "DO" anything and this project lets me guide them through numerous weather activities. Not worksheets and videos, we are working together to create different situations found in nature.
Today, we made tornadoes in a jar. They were thrilled as they mixed the ingredients and watched the swirling mixture. It really did look like a tornado. Next we are making clouds in a jar, which is especially fun because it uses shaving cream and food coloring!
Thank you for your support of public education. It really does make a difference!
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. The success-list diary now also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose, formerly found in this space.
As a service to our readers, we are happy to respond to requests for additional Neil deGrasse Tyson photos. This week: Helpful advice for Jon Stewart.