DonorsChoose take two

Well it worked well the first time, and the materials we got at the beginning of the school year have been crucial to the learning and behavior management of the class. This time, I'm hoping that my DonorsChoose request can help tackling the problem of math class being boring and not hands-on enough. I'm asking for about $400 worth of manipulatives and materials to keep the class engaging, and hopefully my department will see its impact and fund these materials for the rest of our math teachers. I've copied the prepared DonorsChoose text below for quick reading (just in case you know anyone who would like to contribute). Plus, if you did, you wouldn't have to feel bad about not getting me something for my 24th birthday today :)

My Students: Math is everywhere in the world around us. Unfortunately, students do not recognize and appreciate this fact when all they do in math class is write definitions and equations on their paper - and you can't blame them for that! Math class should be much more hands-on and visually involved!

My students are awesome. While they are in general many years behind in math, they embrace success in the subject with an excitement that even I don't remember having in high school. From a low-income and often violent community, many of the students deal with issues that make it difficult to see the importance of school, let alone math. Over half of my students are repeating Algebra since they failed it in 8th grade, and they come into class with this preexisting relationship with the subject. Some of them have had past teachers give up on them and some have been crammed into classrooms of more than 40 students, but they are a resilient bunch and truly appreciate the efforts of the teachers that put in the time and give them some tough love to push them on.

My students need math manipulatives to help them visualize algebra and geometry and practice it in a fun and meaningful way.

My Project: Adding and subtracting negative numbers are fundamental skills required for high school math, and so many students enter ill-prepared, making the sliding number lines and double-sided counters crucial for understanding. After this, we will be able to use the color chips and the dice for solving one- and two-step equations, as well as combining like terms. This will be incredible for them because it will demystify the idea of an equation and will visually show what it means to solve for a variable. This skill, after all, is the crux for nearly all math afterward. The geometric shapes will help my Geometry students be able to visualize math in three dimensions, as well as to distinguish the difference between the surface area of a solid and its volume. Helping students to learn this would prepare them to see and use the math in the 3D world around them. Finally, the dice and overhead sets will be great to disguise the practice of these skills as fun games and activities!

For my math classes, it is no secret that every day I must wage a battle against the boredom of my students. I hope that the materials I have requested will make learning more engaging than simply taking notes or writing out expressions and equations. I believe that manipulatives are an amazing supplement to notes, and present math in a visual way that facilitates a shift in how students view mathematics. Instead of seeming like a foreign language, math will be seen as a tool to solve problems!

Happy Holidays