My students need accessible, quality, leveled books across the curriculum subjects that are age and ability appropriate in our Special Education classroom.
Finding books that are interesting and appropriate for a middle school student, but accessible to someone still learning basic sight words can be a challenge. My students need quality books to encourage them to continue to learn new words, with realistic pictures, simple sentences, and sight words.
I primarily teach middle school students identified with Autism and Speech Impairments.
They are still learning basics in communicating with others, reading, math, and more. We also work with the students in the other Life Skills style classroom. Our students have varying ability levels; my students are still learning beginning sight words. I teach the majority of my students' classes, with the exception of electives. We access grade-level curriculum, as well as life skills, social skills, and vocational skills. We strive to relate our lesson to the general education curriculum in a way they can succeed and understand.
Our school is a Title 1 (low-income) school surrounding a major Texas city. We don't get much money for curriculum items, and there were few core curriculum materials provided. Many of our age-appropriate books I make myself. Our students take such joy in learning, even the smaller skills. These books will allow us to touch on literacy skills across the curriculum.
My Project
These resources will provide a much needed augmentation of our classroom library. We will use the books for language arts activities, as well as science and social studies. They will allow my students to practice sight words and reading with books that look more like they are meant for middle school students. Students will learn to better appreciate reading. The books are easily relatable to topics that students their age are learning in their general education classrooms. They will allow me to spend less time searching for or making curriculum items, and more time developing stronger interactive lessons to utilize these materials. The books will also allow us to explore and appreciate different cultural practices and celebrations, and relate social skills to social studies. These students want to learn, and having a set of each of these books in my classroom will allow me to better teach them!
Every little donation will bring my class closer to having quality materials that they can access but that also look more appropriate for their middle school age level.
It would be amazing to have these materials available to work into our lessons this coming school year! Thank you so much for looking at our request and thank you for all those who choose to help us have an even better year of learning!
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