How the time has flown!

I cannot believe that it has almost been a month since my last post! That is just crazy! Not to worry though, I have been diligently working.

First, I have officially started my request/applying/asking for money process. I presented my Smartboard presentation(from my parent presentations in March) to the White River School PTA on April 14th. They seemed impressed by the idea, which makes me very excited. They decided to give me $150 now. They also told me that if I needed more financial help in the fall, they would probably be willing to donate again! I was so excited to hear this news. I have some other huge news about donations. I have been in contact with Mimi and Mr. Shoob through the Brie Foundation over these past few weeks. They have decided to fund me with $500 towards the program! I was delitedly shocked by this news! I am so very thankful for these donations. They will enrich the program greatly.

I believe that I have made a final decision on how the program will run next year! I plan on completing two sessions. The first session will run soon after school begins. It will run 3-4 weeks. At the end of this session, I will provide a questionaire/feedback form for the parents. The second session will run right after we all get back from Christmas vacation. I will use the time in between the sessions to make suggested changes from the parents and work on making the program the best it can be. I am still undecided on what my two cultures will be however.

I have continued to work on my thesis paper. I was having trouble making the last entry "work right" or flow well. Mrs. Haynes and I spent quite a bit of time towards making it the best paper it could be. I just recieved it back from my thesis reader on Wednesday. I recieved a 19/20 on it! She would like me to include a conclusion on it now instead of waiting for the end. That is a simple fix, I think I can do it!

There is my update for now. I know it is long, but I have not been on in so long! I will be making some updates to the website soon, possibly tonight. So...stay tuned! Thanks for reading!

Just a quick note...

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am putting my plan into action now. I had mentioned before that I wanted to present my Smartboard or part of my Smartboard presentation to the White River PTA. I have emailed Mr. Ashley and Jeanette Leavitt to ask if I can be on the May agenda. Mr. Ashley is the school principle, so he must be asked to be on the agenda. Jeanette is the President of the PTA, so she must be asked also. I have not heard anything back from either one yet.
I have also emailed CLiF(Children's Literacy Foundation). I took this straight from the CLiF website explaining the foundation:
ABOUT CLiF
The Children’s Literacy Foundation (CLiF) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to nurture a love of reading and writing among children throughout New Hampshire and Vermont. Since 1998 CLiF has served more than 75,000 children in more than 320 communities across every region of the Twin States.
CLiF targets two groups of children from birth to age 12:
Children in rural communities where resources are limited
Children who are at high risk of growing up with low literacy skills

They actually came to the White River School recentley. Unfortunately, I was not able to go, so I was not able to talk to the man who came through the foundation. CLiF is run solely on donations. So, I emailed them to ask for any suggestions. I have not heard back from them either. If anyone wants to look into CLiF more, the url to the website is:
http://www.clifonline.org/index.cfm
I will let everyone know when I hear back from any of these people. Hopefully, it will be soon! Sorry, this turned into a not-so-short note!

News, news, news!

I have been working on the funding for the project. More specifically, I have been writing the letter that I will send to the stores, organizations, and foundations. I used my proposal of the project for the outline. Then, I cut out some things, added some things, and left some things exactly as they were written because I did not feel that they could have been written any better. Basically, I edited the whole paper to make sense to the places I am sending it.
The other progress I have made is that I have recieved some contact information of people and other news regarding my possible financial sources that I am asking. What I now have is:
- Contact information of Kay Ross, who is the President of the Rotary.
- Contact information of Trisha Kent, who is on the Chamber of Commerce.
- Another possible source, but I still have to look into it.
- The possibility of Price Chopper donating "things" for the end celebration.
I was very excited to have these things happen. I feel I am going strides in the right direction now. As you can see, I have a couple new sources. I have already edited the last post to add them to the list of possible financial support. I really have worked over vacation!

Donation sources

I have been talking with my mom, aunt, and Mrs. Haynes recently about where I am going to apply for money donations. Today, my mom helped me make a list of all of the sources. These are the ones we have come up with so far:

BJ's Wholesale Club
White River School PTA
Mascoma Bank
Members Advantage Credit Union
Walmart
Borders
Encore! Used and New Books
Staples
Shaws
Rotary Club
Lions Club
Chamber of Commerce
Price Chopper
Another possible source that is still being looked into

The places like BJ's and Staples might be willing to donate food or paper goods for the final celebration(BJ's) or free or reduced copying or supplies for activities(Staples). The other option is that they might donate some money.
Borders and Encore will, hopefully, give me a discount on the books, since I will be ordering so many and the cause.
This is the focus for my project over the next week because I will be on school vacation. I plan on getting a finalized letter to send to all of these places. The letter will be a lot like my initial proposal for the project, but I intend on tweaking it a bit.
This is keeping me very busy for the meantime!

Books

Since the next due date for my thesis paper is due on March 4th, I have begun looking into different books for my evidence/proof. Mrs. Haynes was able to find a few for me to use.
These are the books that I have been reading for my paper thus far:

Sociocultural Contexts of Language and Literacy by Bertha Perez also with Teresa L. McCarty, Lucille J. Watahomigie, Maria E. Torres-Guzman, To thi Dien, Ji-Mei Chang, Howard L. Smith, and Aurelia Davila de Silva

7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

These are the books that will be useful for narrowing down the search for books and activities to use with the kids:

Ready, Set, Motivate! How to Capture Young Readers with Visual Aids by Jennifer B. Coleman

The Kids' Multicultural Art Book: Art & Craft Experiences from Around the World by Alexandra M. Terzian

Discovering World Geography with Books Kids Love by Nancy A. Chicola and Eleanor B. English

I am starting with these. I have been looking through and reading them and they seem like they will work very well. The Read Aloud Handbook has newer copies of it, so I am trying to find the most recent, now. I am always looking for more book titles, so if there are any ideas of books for me to use for reasearch or for the kids, or titles that would work for the actual program, let me know. Thanks!

Update...

Recentely, I have begun to work more seriously on the details of the project. For example, I have a basic budget worked out. Mrs. Haynes helped me make it on Excel(since I have not had much experience using it). It was really cool! We were able to make formulas, so that whenever I change a certain number, all of the figures change. For example, if the formula is:
number of book titles * number of kids = total number of books needed
So, if I change the number of kids from 30 to 28, the total number of books will change also. It is really helpful, so that all of the math will not have to be redone everytime. This is only a "rough" budget. I will continue to work with it until I feel that it is sufficient.

Part of READ logo!

This little girl on the book is part of the logo for my book project. The rest of the logo is the word READ in all capital letters. I will be getting that put up on here soon.

I feel that this girl portrays exactly how I feel. She has a look about her that says that reading is the greatest thing. She looks like she is strong, powerful due to her reading abilities. I love the look of it!

What next?

Now that the parent presentations are behind me, I find myself questioning what I am going to do next. The next steps to my project are to outline a budget and apply for grants. The budget I will put into an excel document. Mrs. Haynes says that it will not be too hard, so we will probably do this next week. As far as the grants, I am looking into places where I can apply. I know one place I will present to is the White River School PTA. I intend to use some of the slides from my Smartboard presentation. That will be in April.

I recieved my first draft of my thesis write-up back yesterday. My thesis reader likes the idea for my project very much. I passed with distinction. I am very excited about the approval!

Parent Presentations

Tonight was the parent presentations. I think that overall they went well. I think that I did well, too. I recieved a lot of compliments on it as I was handing out the bookmarks we made. The bookmarks have the logo of the program on them. The logo is READ (in all capitals, each letter is a different color: red, yellow, blue, and green) and a little girl standing on an open book with her hands on her hips. It is really cool to be able to say that I have a logo now. Anyway, I am glad that the presentation is behind me, but I think that it was an okay experience. Plus, now my project is out there. A.k.a. everyone knows about it. I think some of the other parents and my peers are excited about it like me now!

Done!

I am done! I just completed my Smartboard presentation for the parent presentations tomorrow. I am very excited because I think that it turned out good. All that is left is to write note cards for me to use as prompts and to keep me on track tomorrow during the presentations. That is very important to get done now.

Presentations and name

Finally, I have a name for my project! I intend to call it READ, which stands for Reading Encourages Academics and Diversity. I think that this name it nice because it will mostly be known as the READ program, so it is short and catchy. However, it also has the more meaningful/official name. I like it and am getting more and more excited about the program all the time.
The parent presentations are just around the corner now. They are on Sunday. I am nervous, but also excited because this is the first time I really get to show everyone that I am serious about what I am doing, I like what I am doing, and it will be very benficial to the school. I think it will go well, however, I still have a lot of work to do for it.
All week, I have been working afterschool with the Smartboard putting my presentation together. Yesterday, Mrs. Haynes and Donna helped me organize my ideas and I was able to get a lot accomplished. Today, though, when I went back to work on it more, the flash did not work on some of the special effects. This was very disapointing because all of the work I did yesterday was almost all gone. So, today I had to spend with Mrs. Haynes trying to figure out the problem and try to fix it. We found a solution, so I will continue to move forward with it now. I am going to get as much done tomorrow as I can and finish it on Saturday. On Saturday, I will also practice it over and over and over!

Presentation and title

Tonight, I have been working on organizing my ideas for my presentation. They are one week from Sunday, so this coming week I will spend putting the presentation on the Smartboard. On top of just putting together the presentation, we have been working on possible title options for the program. We have it narrowed down to two that we like, so I emailed Mrs. Haynes to see which she prefers. I am looking forward to hearing her response.

Smartboard

Yesterday Mrs. Haynes showed me some things on the Smartboard program. They were all kind of basic things, but still very cool. I think that my presentation will end up being more fun with the Smartboard animation and its assets.

Working hard...

I have been working hard on my project this week. I have emailed my thesis advisors to let them know about my new email and blog. Currently, I am waiting for their replies. I have been thinking about this blog more and I really think that it is a good idea. It is a different way than simply journaling my progress. I will begin the organization on my Smartboard presentation, hopefully, this weekend. I think that I will also be able to use this Smartboard presentation to present to the PTA at the elementary school and any other places where a Smartboard is available. Other than my Smartboard presentation, I am trying to come up with a name for the project. A possible idea, that has been thought about the most, is Hannah's Bananas. The Bananas stands for Books are nice and necessary and super. I do not know if I like it completely. I also think that I want to change the super to some other 's' word. It's a lot to think about.

First post!

Today I made my blog. I am going to use this blog as my journal for my honors senior project. I thought that it was going to be difficult to start the blog. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not hard at all. Yesterday, I set up my gmail account. Now that was tough! Mrs. Haynes and I could not find an account name that was not already taken. We were able to find one eventually, so it is set up. I am going to email my three project advisors to give them my new email and tell them that I started this blog. This week, I am going to start putting my Smartboard presentation for the parents together. I am excited for the opportunity to use the Smartboard. The parent presentations are going to come very quickly and I have a lot of work to do on it.