My students need access to mentor texts for use in interactive read alouds and studying different author's crafts to incorporate into their own writing.
Our school has been working diligently to incorporate differentiated instruction for our literacy block in order to get our students to meet the end of the year standards. When we started last year with our first graders, there were over 65% of students who were below the benchmark for reading.
Fortunately, we have had very motivated students who are ready to learn.
Our school has limits on classroom sizes of eighteen students. However, I hope to share these mentor texts with the other three first grade classrooms. The student population consists of 42% English-language learners and 57% of students from low-income families. Our school has over five hundred students, and only has kindergarten through second-grade. This allows for a variety of opportunities for collaboration among teachers and grouping students for guided reading groups.
Students typically do not feel confident in writing until their reading skills strengthen. While we have a great set of resources available for our students in reading, we are limited in terms of texts that students can access in order to pick up various author crafts. Students need fabulous authors to inspire their own writing.
My Project
Everyday we have time for an interactive read aloud. Last year we did this before our Writers Workshop lesson. I am looking to develop a collection of great authors with a variety of teaching points that my students can use as mentors. We need books that have great illustrations, incorporate humor, use speech bubbles and other dialog, demonstrate the use of onomatopoeia, show metaphors and similes, as well as other things authors can use in their writing.
After examining these points within the story, the students will assist the teacher in using a specific craft within a shared writing piece where both the teacher and students share the responsibility of writing. Next, students are released to try to incorporate a similar point into their own writing. Last, students are given time to share their writing with their peers to help build confidence. The books are then available to students in our classroom library that they may reference at any time.
As a teacher, it is sometimes overwhelming to look at all the progress that your students need to make in order to make the grade-level standards.
However, this task is made much easier when the appropriate resources are available, and the kids are engaged and excited to read and reread the material to use these authors as mentors. I thank you for supporting my students developing their love of writing to make a better foundation for their lives.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Sarikaya and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.