A Love for Literacy: Ignite the Passion with a New Library!

My Students

I am an educator because I want my students to love to learn and strive to continue learning for a lifetime. I feel that creating and fostering a passion for learning lies in the students desire to love to read. This supplement of books to my library will be a step to igniting that passion.

I work in a school that is in a rural community.

Because of the location and the moderate poverty rate, literacy achievement in our school is quite low. My students are extremely passionate and exciting young people when they are interested in a topic, so I feel that by providing them with a wonderful, current collection of books and resources to supplement our library will not only enhance my instruction in the content areas but foster a love for learning. I believe that a love for reading lies at the heart of this love for learning. I also have students that are far below grade-level achievement in literacy and therefore selected quite a bit of lower grade level books since the classroom library I inherited as a new teacher was extremely lacking in this area.

My Project

For literature, I chose texts from the "100 Children's Books to Read in a Lifetime" list to ensure that my students will have the highest quality literature in our classroom library. For non-fiction, I chose texts that align with our common core standards in the content areas (such as electromagnetism, the moon, animal adaptations, etc) to supplement the textbooks that we use in my student's independent reading. Since I do have a little less that half of my class that is under-grade level, I was sure to choose books for our library that they could read independently as well since this area of library was essentially non-existent. My students will use these texts for independent reading as well as research within the classroom. They will learn to enjoy reading as an activity and not a chore because these texts are age-appropriate, interesting, and up-to-date.

Since I am a new teacher, I have realized quickly that all of my huge dreams that I have for my students I will not be able to achieve alone.

I chose to become a teacher because I think there is no greater calling than to help shape the future of society. I truly believe that putting new and exciting texts in their hands will help students find that passion for reading. I would love for you to partner with me in this great endeavor and ignite a spark within these wonderful students.