Batting for Bunting and Other Home Run Authors: Reading Books to Learn How to Write!!
The cost of this proposal to purchase a large number of books by Eve Bunting and a variety of titles by other authors to enable a second-grade class to engage in an author-study reading and writing project is $976, including shipping and [fulfillment].
$953 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
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.
One of the most important things I do as a teacher is to help my students develop a love for reading and writing. I teach second grade at PS 59 in the Bronx. Over ninety percent of our students qualify for the free lunch program. Every day, these students struggle with difficult circumstances in their lives. Books offer them an alternative world, the world of literature. As a teacher, my job is to foster the kinds of reading and writing skills in my students that will help them go on to work more independently, to help them achieve in school and to become, I hope, lifelong readers and writers.
This year, I would like to help my students with their own reading and writing by first having them study a single author. This author will be like a mentor. As a class, we will read a number of different books all by this same author, and look specifically to learn strategies that could be used to help with writing. I have selected Eve Bunting as our class author. She is a wonderful writer, and I had the privilege of meeting her at a writing conference this summer. She told many stories about her trials and triumphs as an author, and confided that she came up with ideas for various books by using stories from her own life. Sharing the secret of being a good writer, she said: ?There is only one subject in literature and that is life itself.? I wish to pass this secret on to my students as they seek to become good writers. As a class, we will not only learn writing strategies from Eve Bunting, but also will learn how to look into our lives to spark ideas for good stories.
After studying books by Eve Bunting, I would like the students, working with partners or in small groups, to also be able to study another author, one of their own choosing. They will immerse themselves in that author's writing, and work together to identify writing strategies that that mentor author uses. They will then be enouraged to practice using similar strategies on their own to improve their own writing.
I am very excited about this author-as-mentor project and am confident that it could benefit students at all reading levels. However, our second-grade classroom library does not contain enough books for me to be able to follow through on this idea. My proposal is for funding to purchase a large number of books by Eve Bunting and a great variety of titles by other authors such as Donald Crews, Angela Johnson, Ezra Jack Keats, Vera B. Williams and Joanne Ryder. Having these books will give my students the experience of how wonderful it is to have a library of good books to choose from. It will mean that they will have books at various levels of difficulty, and it will help them begin to study reading and writing feeling supported by their author-mentor.
Please help us turn this classroom dream into a reality. My students and I are truly grateful for any help, and thank you for considering this proposal for books.
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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. McDaniel and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
