Ms. Kelsey Majiros, a Student Learning Assistant at Penn-Trafford’s McCullough Elementary School, recently received funding for her project “Working Together To Close the Learning Gap.” Ms. Majiros instructs specific lessons correlated with Reading and ELA to each 1st grade classroom and also supports students one-on-one as needed. Majiros received funds through the DonorsChoose crowdfunding platform to acquire hands-on learning tools and lessons to enhance her students’ learning.
The new ‘Sound Box Mats and Chips’ and ‘Magnetic Letter Whiteboards’ build on students' phonemic awareness and phonics skills. The materials provide her students the opportunity to move magnetic letters to build and segment words, as well as hear and recognize the number of phonemes in words.
The ‘Decodable Reader’ encourages children to sound out words using decoding strategies rather than guessing from pictures or predicting from other cues. Ms. Majiros has already seen the growth in her students fluency and comprehension, as well as their confidence.
The new lesson plans and the hands-on learning tools help Ms. Majiros’s students to become one step closer to closing the learning gap.
Jameson Atchison build on the phonics lesson using the ‘Magnetic Letter Whiteboard’
Carrie Prosowski reads from the Decodable Reader
Meadow Lawther uses the Sound Box Mats and Chips