This week, we’re helping an Alabama elementary school get some coding robots, and a Texas high school get a popular supplementary biology book. We hope that readers who support quality public school education will help by sharing or supporting our featured projects.
The Inoculation Project is an ongoing, volunteer effort to crowdfund science, math, and literacy projects for public schools in low-income neighborhoods. As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that facilitates tax-deductible donations to specific, vetted projects in public schools.
Our new project this week aims to help a teacher in a Montgomery, Alabama elementary school, whose students would love to learn how to program robots! We currently have 2x matching funds available from the Central Alabama Community Foundation, so with any luck, we can make the most of that opportunity.
PROJECT #1
Resources: Help me give my students some coding robots to help them learn how to code.
Economic need: An Equity Focus School; nearly all students from low‑income households.
Location: Wares Ferry Road Elementary School, Montgomery, Alabama
Total: $610.42 (2x matching funds from Central Alabama Community Foundation)
Still Needed: $270.42 Completed, thank you! Please consider project #2 below.
Project description by Mrs. Holley: All of our students want to learn to play/code robots. Dash Robots will help students learn coding and STEM in a fun and engaging way!
Dash Robots guides kids of all experience levels through a library of in-app challenges to inspire tomorrow’s inventors.
Students will be so excited to learn how to code using these DASH Robots. All grade levels K-5 will be able to use and code DASH Robots.
DASH Robots will also be used throughout the whole school to show students the fun of learning using robots.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Here’s a short introductory video from the makers of the robots.
We made some progress on this longer-term project last week, so let’s keep at it!
You might remember that, back in October, this supplemental biology book was requested by another high school. Sometimes, an item appears in a project and then suddenly there are dozens of requests for it. I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here, but it certainly looks like a worthy book to become popular!
Mrs. Gueller’s school is a bit west of Corpus Christi, along the Gulf Coast.
PROJECT #2
Resources: Help me give my students a resource that they will enjoy to read.
Economic need: An Equity Focus School; nearly all students from low‑income households.
Location: Robstown High School, Robstown, Texas
Total: $464.82
Still Needed: $400.41 $291.00
Project description by Mrs. Gueller: “Everything You Need to Ace Biology In One Big Fat Notebook” is a book that breaks down hard to understand Biology concepts into easy to read concepts. The visuals in this book assist the kids in learning hard to understand concepts. I used this book in tutoring with Special Needs tutoring and it worked! I would love to have more access to these books. I would like to put a book under each student's desk so they can use it whenever they are not on their Chromebook or when they need to research more stuff on the topic we are covering. Please consider helping me with a reading resource.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Here’s an ad from the publisher that explains what the Big Fat Notebooks are all about.
Our main project from last week was completed, after a couple of weeks of work from our readers!
Project #1, Having Fun Growing Reading Skills in the Library!: As an elementary-school librarian, Ms. Fischer works with pre-K - second grade students each week, and needs some hands-on activities to go along with their story times.
As I write Saturday night, she has not yet seen the good news, so we’ll have her note for you next time.
DonorsChoose has developed the designation Equity Focus Schools to describe some schools that submit projects. They meet two criteria: at least 50% of students are Black, Latinx, Native American, Pacific Islander, or multiracial, and at least 50% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, the standard measure for school economic need. You can read more at the link about their efforts to address the longstanding inequity in education. |
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project seeks to fund science, math, and literacy projects in public school classrooms and libraries. Our conduit is DonorsChoose, a crowdfunding charity founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau.
Every Sunday, we focus on helping to fund projects in neighborhood public schools where the overwhelming majority of students come from low-income households. We welcome everyone who supports public school education — no money is required!
Finally, here’s our list of successfully funded projects — our series total is 1064! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.