Thanks to the amazing generosity of our community, the PTA funded 13 teacher grants totaling $13,509 this school year. This includes funding for Rapid Response Fall book room grant, Modern World History novels, Peardeck apps, Speech and Debate team support, TI-84 rechargeable calculators for the math department, a literature app for German students, art supplies, theatre masks, acceleration sensors for physics, cricut machine and vinyl for leadership, and ukuleles for the new singer/songwriter class.
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Feedback from teachers and students:
Thank you so much for the grant for rechargeable calculators! They are such a valuable tool for our students. Students' comprehension can increase many-fold using calculators as they can observe transformations of functions and explore graphs that would be quite time consuming to always do by hand. Although we do those too! And since these calculators are allowed on standardized tests it helps students prepare for them as well. During Distance Learning we have seen how much we all rely on technology and how it can help level the field.
Thank you for your generous grant. The calculators will be put to good use.
Carolyn Hintz.
Advanced and IB math teacher.————————————————————————————————
Thank you for your support!
Nancy Yang
Mandarin Teacher
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Thank you so much for the support. I appreciate everything the PTA does for Cleveland and for the Arts and especially for Theatre.
Michael Payne
Theater Director————————————————————————————————
Thank you so much for fulfilling my request. It is deeply appreciated!
Warmly, Rafael Bobenrieth————————————————————————————————
Thank you so much, Rosemary! The students and I really appreciate the PTA's support!
LeeAnne
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Rosemary and the entire CHS PTA Grant Committee -Thank you so much for your gracious grant! Lurena and I are SO EXCITED!!! We have been dreaming of all of the things we will be able to do with the Cricut! Hopefully, we can use it for PTA supported events, too! What fun!Thank you so much!
Susie Brighouse & Lurena Weesner————————————————————————————————
Rosemary, et al,
Sorry this has taken a while, but here is some feedback from students about the use of Peardeck, which the PTA so generously granted money for myself and my colleague, Sarah Hardy. Needless to say, this year has presented a multitude of challenges in terms of student engagement. I'm happy to know that because of Peardeck, many students have felt that they have a voice and a medium to connect their experiences with the content presented in our class, IB History of the Americas.
Big thanks, Tim and Sarah
Peardeck Student Feedback:
I think the most useful activities for me were writing in a pear deck where you can see everyone’s comments, so that I can see what others are doing and get help from that.
I find that peardeck is the most useful activity because it keeps me focused and engaged. I can get distracted easily and online learning has made it worse, but activities such as peardeck are very helpful, because you have to be actively engaged.
I like having peardecks where we can answer questions. It's less pressure to be right or have the best answer when your classmates don't see your name attached to it.
Peardeck is one of the things we have used during class that I thought was helpful, as it kept me engaged during meets at times when it was hard to stay focused sitting in front of a computer.
Peardeck has been really useful, it feels very engaging and it motivates me to participate throughout the entire class.
I do enjoy pear decks. It’s a simple, low-risk opportunity to chime in and share ideas with the class. The interactivity is also a nice touch to otherwise typical presentations.
Peardeck makes it a lot easier for me to get engaged with the class + keeping me in check if my attention started drifting, as well as just being very useful in general when I want to go back and take notes later.
I think one of the biggest things that helped me was having the pear deck slides. It was easier for me to want to stay tuned into the class rather than do anything else.
The most useful teaching strategies are probably the Peardecks, because they’re very engaging.
I actually love the peardecks, it’s an individual thing but I like how you go through everyone's answers. I like hearing their opinions and seeing how they connect to mine.
I prefer doing a peardeck where we can answer instead of a class discussion because it's less stressful and is more inviting for me to express my opinions on a topic
