My students need e-Readers. We have found e-Readers to be motivating to reluctant readers and a pleasant experience for all readers. The basic Kindle will be perfect!
Kindles would serve 3 important purposes in our school: they are intrinsically motivating to reluctant readers, they are fun to use for all readers, and it would allow us to get the most popular titles in kids' hands quickly. Rather than order & wait for books to arrive, we can get Kindle versions.
We are the biggest middle school in our city, with over 850 students that are 11-14 years old.
We are very diverse economically, racially/ethnically, and have a large international population whose parents attend our city's university. While many of our kids are confident readers, our population of struggling readers is increasing. Like most kids, our students LOVE technology and seek it out. Our staff are technologically savvy, and are very supportive of library use. We have no eReaders at this time, and I think it is time to add this choice to our library. Historically our kids and staff have been responsible about caring for technology, so I am confident that our Kindles will be treated as the shared resource that they are.
My Project
As our school has become more and more crowded, I have struggled to keep up with having adequate numbers of specific books that students want to read. For example, both our reluctant and enthusiastic readers want 'The Maze Runner,' but it is difficult to get enough print copies of this popular title quickly. With Kindles, we can get popular titles and/or titles used by classroom teachers in minutes. I have been talking to students who own eReaders about what they like about them and I hear repeatedly that they find them easy to use, easy to carry around, and they like the fact that they can look up words right away. Our library Kindles would mainly support students' recreational reading, since we are only asking for five. They will also be available for teachers to use with small reading groups.
Having Kindles available in our library will add another tool to increase student literacy.
Because Kindles are user friendly and intrinsically motivating, we will be able to support reading and vocabulary building with another tool besides print books. I know there will be a lot of buzz if/when they are available, and I am excited to be able to have the ability to get wanted titles into kids' hands quickly and easily.
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