Donor Choose - Grants

I was just recently awarded a grant through Donor Choose for science themed reading material for a classroom at our school. I was required to write a grant through a class I was taking as a final project (we didn't have to get it funded we just had to write and submit). Several of us in the class got our requests funded. Mine was flat out funded but a friend of mine got hers funded through a series of donations to the project (which is a great way to get parents involved by asking them to contribute a little bit to the materials you need).

For those educators who have not heard of Donor Choose it is a site where teachers can put up grant requests for their classroom. The entire process is very easy. The site walks you through everything step-by-step.

Some tips I would pass on are:

1. Put a picture up of you with your class (make sure photos are permissible of your students first). I think if donors can get a sense of who you are and your students you run a better chance of getting funded.

2. Work backwards. I wanted to get a grant for a science newsletter in the classroom but the site works with very specific vendors - none of whom carried the newsletter I wanted. I decided to look at the vendor sites first and then write my grant to match what I could get (in this case Time Magazine for Children for my writing/ELA class).

3. Write your responses in Word and copy into the blocks they give you. Save your Word document. I remember going to town the first time with my write up on the site and my computer froze and I lost everything and had to start from scratch (annoying!). I have used portions of my saved grant write ups with other non-Donor Choose grants this way.

4. Look at other grant requests for ideas. My problem isn't doing the write up...it is coming up with the ideas. Sometimes one project might trigger an idea for another project (I got "build your own telescopes" for an astronomy grant after seeing a grant request for something else related to astronomy).

Paper Pull Outs

I had seen a project on the internet that involved a pull out tab on a teapot and I have been thinking about how it can be used in notebooking. Today I had my "Aha moment" :)

I know my examples above are social studies based and that is only because I happen to be meeting with some social studies teachers this week. The concept would still apply to science.

One social studies teacher is entering a unit about westward expansion. I thought she could take the groups they discuss and students would choose a group (rancher, Native American, Asian immigrants, miners, etc.) to do a pull out tab person for their right hand assignment (my example was of a cowboy/rancher) - the fourth picture is what the back looks like. When finished the edges only would be glued to the notebook (leaving the tab to move freely in and out of the hat). Students would have to finish writing their information on the tab before the edges of the picture got glued in the book (very hard to write on the tab once it is already glued in the book...learned the hard way :)

Another teacher I am meeting with is doing a unit on explorers - so my two bottom examples were of a viking and Christopher Columbus ship.

I freehand copied clip art pictures on the internet because I can't draw at all. I did a Google image search for "viking clip art" and found a forward facing viking and freehand sketched it for this project.

I am hoping to convince these two teachers to do this project. If I am successful I will post some student samples!

Origami Tshirts

This class made origami t-shirts that they then decorated with items that represented themselves. They wrote about the decorations and how they fit into their lives in the computer lab (using Microsoft Word). The teacher took pictures of their heads and they were cut to fit the t-shirts.

I really liked this project. For this class it was a beginning of the year project but I could easily do it with a Social Studies or Science class. I would change the instructions to read: "Create t-shirt designs that match an event in history. Write about how your drawings match what we've studied in social studies."

The instructions for making the origami shirt can be followed from this Activity TV site.

Room Decorating Idea

I liked the wall decal and the fabric around the desk of this teachers room.

Hallway Display

I found out last week that I was assigned a bulletin board in the school for this month. I had seen a picture of a cute Facebook bulletin board that a teacher had done for her class and I essentially copied it :)

It was a huge hit in the school because of the interactive "status update". Parents, teachers, and students are encouraged to post updates throughout the week.

Sketchy Science II

Thanks to all the participants in our Sketchy Science contest at the Secret Science Club's Kickstarter party. The challenge was to draw the “Future of Science,” and sketchers envisioned oversexed computers, jellyfish-powered vehicles, scientists wet-wired to their iPads, and scary robot monsters. Congratulations to our winner, Aaron Lampell!

Scratched Constellation Designs

I taught my constellation activity today. It didn't go as well as I hoped (Monday???). One class didn't finish. The other class did with lots of complaining (about coloring)!

I took an idea I found on the internet (see this site) and modified it for the class. I initially wanted to use the cards and hole punch like the website but my hole punches wouldn't reach far enough in. I saw this idea on the web and thought of using it as well but couldn't find any jumbo push pins.

I remembered an old Girl Scout craft where you colored one color underneath a darker color (crayons) and scratched out a design and thought that would work.

The students really had to color hard with both colors - yellow on the bottom and blue on top (hence the complaining). It did not work well with generic crayons (Crayola worked best). Time wise it took about 20 minutes for the entire class to finish. We scratched out the constellations using paper clips.

The right hand side of the notebook held the lyrics to a constellation song on YouTube. You can download the lyrics HERE. (The kids loved the song. We listened to it and sang it about five times). The left hand side held the finished scratched constellations.

Constellation Activity

I am teaching a fourth grade class about constellations this coming week and came across this adorable idea (picture above) from this blog.

Sadly I don't think I have time to do this activity with this class (the lesson is on Monday and today is Saturday) but I might run it by the teacher to see if we can make it happen.

Sharing the idea because it was just too darn cute not to :)

Pop Culture Points

A teacher in one of our district shared this YouTube video on letting children earn "Pop Culture Points" in the classroom. I love it! One of my favorite things about teaching is when a child comes in and has made a connection to what we are learning in class to what they are watching on TV, reading, or listening to.

We all know that making connections is powerful and helps students remember. This teacher now assigns points for it. I like what one of the interviewed children said, "It makes you think about learning when you aren't normally thinking about learning."

I saw this video a couple of days ago and really started looking for points of reference in the shows I watched. In this weeks Warehouse 13 the dangerous artifact was a pair of binoculars that were on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. On Eureka the entire town was focused on an upcoming launch to Titan, the largest moon on Saturn. I thought both worthy of Pop Culture Points and related to content we teach at the elementary school level :)

The Secret Science Club presents the Census of Marine Life with Jesse Ausubel, Wednesday, September 14, 8 pm @ the Bell House, FREE!

Step into liquid, and explore strange blue worlds where no one has gone before . . .

Dive beneath the waves at the Secret Science Club with Jesse Ausubel, co-founder of the Census of Marine Life. For an entire decade, 2,700 scientists in 80 countries conducted an unprecedented exploration of the oceans, studying undersea ecosystems from hydrothermal vents to the icy Arctic. Their results reveal an astonishing diversity of life, as well as an ocean biosphere dramatically impacted by humans. Dr. Ausubel shares their amazing findings, among them: 

--More than 1,200 ocean species completely new to science, including the hairy-clawed Yeti Crab living 7,200 feet down in the South Pacific, a Darth Vader-shaped deep-sea jellyfish in the Arctic, and a new genus of “zombie worms” that feed on bones of dead whales

--The “White Shark Café,” a mysterious open-ocean hangout between Baja and Hawaii where these cartilaginous creatures congregate for purposes that remain unknown

--An almost incomprehensibly vast world of microscopic life, including tiny microbes forming ginormous mats on the Pacific seafloor, one of which is the size of Greece

An environmental scientist and recipient of the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in Science, Jesse Ausubel is director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, and vice president of programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Following the completion of the Census of Marine Life in 2010, a newly discovered genus and species of deep-sea lobster was named in Dr. Ausubel's honor: Dinochelus ausubeli, which roughly translates as Ausubel's terrifying-clawed creature.

Before & After

--Sway to sea shanties and the murmurs of mermaids

--Stick around for the salty Q&A

--Try our wet and wild cocktail of the night, the Deep-Sea Vent. (It’ll take you down… down…)

This undersea edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, September 14 @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn, p: 718.643.6510  Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th.

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. Free!

Photos: Jellyfish photo by Kevin Raskoff; Yeti crab by Ifremer/A. Fifis.

Unusual Spaces

This teacher has a very small room with not a lot of wall space. I loved that she thought out of the box and used her desk to have students make their lunch choices on. She put the students names on magnets and they move them over when they come in in the morning.

ELA - Beginning of Year Activity

This was an assignment I did when teaching one class of ELA in fourth grade. I stole the idea from a teacher friend of mine (thanks Jamey!). She used the book The Best Part of Me as the literacy tie in and had students write about the best part of them.



One of the third grade teachers in my school loved the assignment and had her kids do it the first week of school.



The first picture was a fourth grade example of this project and the second is a third grade example.