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.
My Students
My students struggle with nonfiction and rarely choose nonfiction for their reading. The Common Core, however, requires that students are able to access nonfiction texts with significant text complexity. By the end of this unit, I want my students to love, and feel confident about, nonfiction.
My 27 students come from a city consistently ranked as one with the highest crime rate, highest child poverty rate and highest alcohol abuse rate in the nation.
Nonetheless, I expect excellence and push my students to rise above the difficulty of their lives to be their best, brightest selves.
My school was designated, 5 years ago, as one of the lowest achieving in the state.
Since that time, we have redesigned ourselves, and with help from the state, new administrators and extensive professional development, we've become one of the top performing schools in the state. In fact, the governor came to our school to award our progress, and we were just named a "School of Distinction" by the United States Department of Education.
My Project
The books that I am requesting are award winning titles that will engage the students. The topics are relevant to their lives and will motivate the students to develop skills for tackling nonfiction. The students will be involved in whole group read aloud books followed by in-depth, student led discussions, following specific protocols, about the text, the text features, and the meanings of the text. Students will work in pairs, in quads and with the whole class as they write about and discuss their ideas based on specific, standards based prompts. Students will also use the books in small guided reading groups and will again strive for deep comprehension as well as strategies for accessing non-fiction.
The students will improve their discussion skills, their writing skills, and their knowledge about nonfiction while also learning about social justice, current events and other topics that they find relevant.
My students have no affection for nonfiction (unlike their teacher!) and this is largely due to a lack of engaging books that are relevant to their lives.
These books will bring excitement: issues of social justice, the stories of artists and poets, facts about animals and current events. Not only will the students learn about topics they care about but they will fall in love with the powerful and important genre of nonfiction and thus become lifelong learners.
Nearly all students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Lauterbach and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
