This year, I decided to try something I've never done before. I had heard about Donors Choose from several other teacher friends, but hadn't tried out the website myself. This year, I changed that.
In the fall, while talking with other 2nd grade ENRICH teachers, we discussed how we would love to use some novels to help teach the students. After all, their reading level was higher than average for 2nd grade, so why not push them to read more difficult text? This is when I turned to Donors Choose. I knew I'd never be able to afford classroom sets of all the books we were wanting to expose our children to, so I set up a couple projects...not expecting much of anything to happen.
The first project I set up was for just one classroom set of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. This is a super fun book and most of the kids have seen at least one of the movies. To my surprise, I received a donation from a complete stranger! Then, during a matching campaign that Donors Choose established, I was able to get the rest funded easily! I was so excited and beginning in January, we jumped right into the new novels!! The kids LOVED it!!
Brady, Ethan, Zach, Connor, and Sam enjoy reading about Charlie and the rest of the kids!
Grace is very consumed in the novel! :)
Jack loves Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
Isabella, Ethan, Claire, Aminata, Rocky, and Jessica working on the workbook I created to go with the novel!
Room 16 loves to READ!
Micah enjoys some reading time!
Partly through the book, students created Thank Yous to be sent to the donors of our project. They were so excited for the novels, so I know the Thank Yous were heartfelt!
Shortly after creating this project on DonorsChoose.org, I decided to do another project...this time, a bigger one. I was quite doubtful that this project would be funded - after all, it was over $950 total that I would need to raise! That's quite a feat...even if it is for education! And to make matters worse, I only had 5 months to accomplish this tremendous goal! However, I stayed as positive as possible and sent emails and put up posts on Facebook. Sure enough, Donors Choose created another matching campaign the week of Valentine's Day and in ONE day, I raised over $700 to COMPLETE this HUGE project!!! I was over the moon...tears and excitement filled the Barnes' household that night!! It was a Monday I won't ever forget!
Shortly after completing the funds collection, I accepted the package at school...two huge boxes filled with FIVE different novels!
The students were so pumped when I told them! Now we have an entire cabinet full of novels just waiting to be read! In the meantime, I had acquired some other classroom sets of novels, so now we are reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. The students seem to be enjoying it, although it's a much shorter novel than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We will finish this one up before spring break, then once we get back, it's onto novel #3 for my super smart 2nd graders! :)
I love looking in this cabinet...and it's even a little bare since I'm allowing another 2nd grade classroom to borrow the Charlie books and we're currently reading Tales.
In this bad boy...we've got James and the Giant Peach, How to Eat Fried Worms, Little House in the Big Woods, Ralph S. Mouse, Superfudge, Trumpet of the Swan, and MANY others! :) :) :)
So this is my public THANK YOU!!!! Thank you to ALL of you who so generously donated to our project!! Know that your donation will reach HUNDREDS of students as we read these novels year after year!!!
THANK YOU!!!
