Mentor Texts to Keep Us Reading and Writing!

My Students

Literacy makes up a large portion of our day. We spend two hours working on literacy where students engage in various independent and partner activities, participate in whole class lessons and work in small groups with the teacher. Books are a huge part of our day in 3rd grade!

I teach at a very diverse school with a lot of different races, languages, income levels and cultures.

I love the diversity and I want my classroom library to reflect this. Some of my kiddos speak Spanish at home and English at school and just die with excitement when they see their Spanish language in a book. My African American boys want books with main characters who look and talk like they do. These are the students who I think about when choosing the perfect books for my classroom collection. These are the kinds of books that make students who "hate" reading at the beginning of the year beg me for just 5 more minutes so they can finish the chapter.

My Project

My students will be using these books every day! They each have their own book box that they get to fill with books that are at their reading level and are of interest to them. I try to let them be as independent with their book choices as possible because I know how important choice is when trying to engage a hesitant reader. These books will be well used and well loved! My hope is that by adding these books to my classroom library, my students will continue to love reading and experience academic success. We are also gearing up for an opinion writing unit this spring. I need a lot of mentor texts to share with my class to show them how writers write in this genre. A typical writing unit begins with many read alouds of "mentor texts", published books that show students how to write in a specific genre or using a specific writing strategy. This project contains many books that will help me teach these lessons.

These books will excite and recharge my students for the second semester of the school year!

This project, if fully funded will continue to build on the amazing community that we already have in our classroom and will reengage my students in reading at a time of year when students tend to loose focus and excitement for learning. I am very excited to bring this collection of books to my students and to see their love of reading continue to grow!