My name is Floricel Negrete. I am a dual language kindergarten teacher at Vose Elementary school, a Title I school in Beaverton.  My kindergarten team consists of five teachers for 107 kindergartners. Three of our classrooms are part of our dual language program that we teach in Spanish. The other two are sheltered instruction classrooms taught in English. 

We have recently had opportunities to explore different technology from the school district and are working to incorporate them in our teaching. Our team has found an amazing program that we could use in our classrooms to teach coding, computer programming, and engineering - the Cubetto Robot. We have been trained on Cubetto and have seen him be used across all content areas - phonics, subitize numbers, tell stories, find rhyming words, mapping, sequence stories and numbers, and more. We fell in love with this wooden robot for its versatility. As a team that has members that teach in different languages it is very important to buy programs that can be used in universal ways or that have an easy way to customize to fit the language in which we teach. Math is universal, of course, so being able to use Cubetto is perfect. We are designing mats to use with this robot that can be used to add, subtract, as well as identify and sequence numbers. These mats will be ready to use in all five of our classrooms. We will also prep mats to use Cubetto in literacy and our English Development block tailored for the language in which we teach. Our students are diverse learners that are growing up surrounded in a world of technology. We want to teach to those strengths and use technology to engage students in learning skills that will prepare them for careers in their future. We see technology as an opportunity to engage students in learning no matter their home language, reading level, or background. 

Although our school is now trained on how to use Cubetto, we have one robot to share with all 26 classrooms in our school. I am asking for $2250 to buy two Cubetto Robots for each kindergarten classroom.  These ten robots will be cherished additions to our classrooms that will engage even our most struggling learners. Please consider donating to our cause and providing us with the resources to incorporate coding in our daily teaching.