You've Gotta BE the Book

My Students

A typical day in my English class starts with Independent Reading a student-chosen book 12 minutes a day. My students are such voracious readers, they've checked out everything in my collection! Lately, they've requested more plays because they love reading and acting them out.

My students are survivors.

I teach in a high poverty area at a Title I school. Even though the community often sees my school through a negative lens, I see it as a close-knit, positive, family environment. The teachers I work with love our students, and for the majority of them, our classrooms are where they feel the most safe. I teach ninth grade. Most of my students come to me below grade level in reading and writing, and for most of them, their confidence was gone years before they got to me. My number one goal is to teach my students to be brave. In reading, it's pushing them to raise their lexiles and read every day to gain fluency. In writing, it's lifting the pen to the page and simply trying. It can be a brave thing to "do it wrong," and I often find teachable moments when my students find the courage to take those risks. My students love to tell stories, and they all have great ones to tell. They also love acting, music, drawing, and being creative.

My Project

This project is all about creating a bigger, better classroom library. The books you are helping buy are chosen by students at my high school based on interest, hype, and new 2015 fiction award winners. When the plays arrive, students will conduct what I call "interviews of texts," and they will get to look at every new play in the collection. They will choose their favorite book, and it will become theirs for the section of class I call "Independent Reading." During this time, students will get to read these chosen texts, and these works will become the basis for their independent practice with aspects of plot, tone, mood, figurative language, characterization, storyboarding, and book talk presentations. Every book a student finishes will be celebrated in a class annotated book log, our 25 Book Campaign (school-wide literacy initiative), and with a readers theater day. Students will also use the plays for monologue and scene studies, which will include performing!

Donations to this project will improve my classroom because students are more likely to want to read things they love.

More reading will yield better readers in time, which means more success in the long run for my kids. Acting and reading plays have been a major hit in my classroom; I've seen self-proclaimed non-readers beg to read aloud and become better at understanding complex plots and character motivations. A library of plays will be very special to my students. Acting rocks!