Fundraiser for Rwanda: A Success!

First, sorry for not being better about writing.  I've done some me fun things lately that I'm about to share.  I've also been doing a lot of reflecting on life - personal and professional - that perhaps I will find some time to share in the month of July.

And now on with the updates:

Awhile back, I shared that I'd become an advocate for Spark Microgrants.  Well, the idea of being an advocate is to share with the others the work of Spark Microgrants and to commit to raising a certain amount of money.  I loved the idea and thought, I am sure I can think of a way to incorporate fundraising into my unit on Fractions, Decimals and Percents.  Also, who better to spread the word to than an entire school!?

I set a goal of raising $500.  Students did some reading and reseraching on Rwanda, on the community we'd be supporting, on the importance of sanitary bathrooms at schools, and, of course, we had some preliminary lessons on fractions, decimals, and percents.  The students were all assigned groups and each group was assigned a specific grade level.  They were responsible for informing this grade level, collecting the donations from their assigned grade level and tracking the donations and participation for that grade level.  They then, every few days, were required to report the amount donated, the amount donated per student in the class (note that this requires averages and decimals!) and then they needed to update a pie chart that provided a visual of the percentage of participation (also quite a bit of fraction, decimal, and percentage work!).

This project was not the only thing they did to learn fractions, decimals, and percents but they were extremely dedicated to the project and the days where we "just" had lessons, they were excellent because they new that they'd need the math for the project and because they knew that if we didn't get through the lesson we'd have less time to visit classrooms and collect donations.  On Thursdays, some of the students would make announcements to the whole school.  I wish I had videos of these announcements because they were soooooo adorable and very effective.  The high school kids totally ate it up. :)

In the end, we raised about $1,350!!!  I could not believe how giving the students, teachers and families were for this small project completed by the 6th graders.  I am so glad that I was able to share my interest in international development with the students, educate them a bit on another part of the world, make a nice contribution to a community in Rwanda, AND teach my students mathematics all at the same time.  It is these moments that remind why teaching is so AWESOME!

The students made posters with notes to the students of the school in Rwanda where we are sending money

Very cute.