Third Grade Listening Center

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I have been teaching the third grade for the past four years at a great school in East Harlem. Our school community's enrollment is about 400 students of which 90 % students qualify for free lunch. Presently my class size is 25 students, which allows for many opportunities for small group projects and activities. This class size also allows me to provide more individualized instruction to support the needs of my students. During my independent reading block, I have different centers set up in my classroom to reinforce many literacy skills. One center that I would love to incorporate this year is a listening center. Many of my students, despite their love of books, are below reading grade level. A listening center will help expose my students to literature as well as increase their overall fluency. This Literacy Center will provide both a positive physical and social context for learning. The integration of this center supports improvement in reading comprehension, language, and writing development. In addition, the structure and design of center will allow for the voluntary participation in cooperative literacy activities by all children as well as increased appreciation for reading and writing. Participating in meaningful and purposeful literacy activities on a regular basis should have positive effects on their reading thus also the entire assessment system. Monitoring student success on performance indicators, performance tasks, and measures of perception will provide data on student literacy achievement. In addition, my observation of center behaviors can provide important information about student independence, interdependence, and cooperative skills. This Listening Center would be set up where a group of four-six children sit and listen to books that are on cassette tapes, while following along in their books. In addition, having such a center I would be able to record my students reading and evaluate how I could help further. My wish is to have a listening center that will include a place for my children to sit, a CD/tape player, books on tape and headphones that will accommodate 4 children in the class. I thank everyone in advance for taking the time to read this proposal that I have submitted on behalf of my third graders. I sincerely hope you can help my students reach their reading potential!