At Their Level: Read Books For 2nd Graders

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

Two years ago my school was able to purchase a fantastic program called Accelerated Reader (AR). This web-based program assesses a student’s reading comprehension, then assigns the student a zone of proximal development (ZPD), basically a reading level range, such as 1.5 - 2.5. Next the student has to find and read books that are in his/her ZPD. After reading the book the student returns to the computer and takes a comprehension quiz. A student earns points depending on the length and difficulty of the book, as well as how many questions the student answers correctly. My second graders have gone wild with reading the last two years. Not only were they reading more books, but the books they were reading were appropriate for their individual reading levels. Thankfully all the books in our school library, as well as my own classroom library, were marked if they had reading comprehension quizzes in AR. My students all knew which books were appropriate for them. My problem is having enough books at the lowest reading levels. Although I teach second grade, many of my students began this school year with reading levels below first grade. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of books in the 0.1 - 0.9 range, which is kindergarten level and lower. Over my 20 years of teaching I have collected many books, but the majority are at higher reading levels due to my many years teaching upper grades. Students can get a book from the school library, but our class visits the library only once a week, and some students need new books every day or two. The purpose of this proposal is to be able to purchase additional book titles that will enhance my classroom library at the lowest reading levels. The books are from various reading series developed for beginning readers, such as Real Kids Readers: Level 1, Rookie Reader, Early Step Into Reading, Ready-To-Read Pre-Level 1, and My First I Can Read Books. I teach in a primarily immigrant and working class neighborhood. Most of my students are learning English as a second language. Most of them have limited access to educational enrichment activities at home. And ALL of them love to learn. The funding of this proposal would help to fill the void of lower level reading books in our classroom library. I know it's only 55 book titles, but those 55 titles would increase by ten-fold the number of books our class has in those levels right now. Thank you.