Audio Books Needed: Serving Low-Readers, ESL Students, and Audio-Visual Learners
The cost of nine audio books from Barnes and Noble is $198, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
I am a Media Specialist for a high school in rural Pender County, North Carolina. We currently have 51% of our students receiving free lunch and 6.75% are English Limited. Being a poor county, with an increasing population, our funds are extremely limited. In addition, we have a very diverse social and economic pool of students.
Because our library collection is relatively young we are still in need of basic resources. In many cases there are huge gaps in the resources we provide. One such gap is audio books. At this time, our library does not carry a single audio book. Although they might be seen as a luxury, in a school library we consider them necessities.
Many of our high school students who step into our library are low readers. Most of which currently read on a 5th to 8th grade level. When our low readers encounter complex literature they often become frustrated and quit because they cannot understand the text. This problem has also arisen with Spanish-speaking students who are attempting to learn English. The only opportunity these students have to learn about great literature is through audio.
In addition, many of our students identify themselves as audio/visual learners, where sounds and images are understood better than text. These students would also benefit greatly if our library had audio/visual resources.
With donated audio books, we can serve multiple groups of students that are currently overlooked: low-readers, English as a second language, and audio/visual students. But without any funds to purchase these badly needed resources we cannot fill this gap ourselves. Please help us close this gap.
Students will immediately benefit from these resources, which include: Don Quixote, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Silas Marner, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, The Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men, Things Fall Apart, and Night. With the help of donors, this will be the beginning of our audio book collection.
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