Building Confidence in Reading

My Students

"Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom." (George Washington Carver) My dream for my students is that their lives will be full of wonderful choices not just at the end of their 4th grade school year, but continuing on throughout their lives.

"Courage.

Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness." (R.J. Palacio, Wonder) Each of my students has the potential to achieve greatness. Courage, kindness, friendship and character are qualities I hope to solidify in my wonderful students. No matter their reading level, all 4th grade students deserve the opportunity to absorb the beauty of the book Wonder. Thoreau is a high poverty, diverse school. Our staff is deeply caring and committed to closing our achievement gap and heightening the success of all students. Students in my classroom come from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds, many are English language learners. My students love to participate in high level discussions about books, however, some students are not yet at the reading level to read the books independently. By building our listening library, all students will have access to rich, complex, thought provoking texts.

My Project

Each day, my students have various academic choices during our 120 minute literacy block. One of the choices is Listen to Reading. During that choice, students listen to a text and follow along with the words in the book. We interactively model and practice how to listen to the book and look at the words at the same time, while pausing to summarize and discuss what we are listening to. All students love this choice, however, we often have difficulty finding high quality texts for 4th graders to listen to. In addition, some of my students have difficulty participating in high level book club discussions because their reading level is not high enough to independently read our book club selections. By building our classroom listening library, all students will have access to participation in these high level academic discussions about literature.

This will not only help my students build their love of reading, but will also help them build their vocabulary and improve their speaking and listening skills.

It will broaden their minds and build their confidence in their academic abilities. By participating in book clubs and discussions on grade level or higher than grade level texts, they will begin to see themselves as the scholars they are.