Have you ever saved money to do something special? Cindy Evans and her third-grade class are sure to answer, "Yes!"
Cindy Evans works at Big Beaver Elementary School in Big Beaver, Pennsylvania. One day, she and her third-grade class read about the Great American Smokeout inWeekly Reader. The Smokeout is an event to help people give up smoking. The American Cancer Society runs it.
"We read that about l million people give up smoking each year," said Ms Evans. Then her students asked her. "What does 1 million look like?" Ms Evans told her class the best way to see 1 million was to collect 1 million things.
"I was thinking about collecting 1 million small things like erasers," said the teacher. But her students had a better idea: to collect 1 million pennies (分) and give them away to the American Cancer Society. Soon the class started their big job.
Many people in the neighbourhood joined the students. According to Ms Evans, the bank in their neighbourhood had to keep more pennies because so many people were collecting them.
That June, the class went to the office of the American Cancer Society with 1,177,500 pennies, or$11,775. They hoped that the money could help more people keep healthy.
