My students live in a high-poverty suburb of Cincinnati, OH. These children face many challenges both in and outside of the classroom. They come into school at various levels of development. Some students do come in ready to read, write, explore, and succeed. The majority do not. They need a safe space and a positive role model to teach them what school is all about.
These students are highly motivated but need to be given choice over their learning.
I have had the opportunity to teach this group in Kindergarten and am fortunate enough to be moving up to 1st grade with them. These students blew me away with what all they were able to accomplish last year. I structure my class so that students are aware of the high expectations for them. Through positive reinforcement, love, and encouragement, students are motivated to meet and exceed my expectations.
I hope to give my students many more opportunities to succeed this year. I want to see them learn and grow into responsible students! In order to do so, they have to be given choices over their day and show that they can handle new responsibilities in their school day.
My Project
My district has adopted the materials we need to incorporate Guided Learning. This is a wonderful curriculum model that allows the teacher to meet with small groups of students, rather than teaching to the whole class. In our small groups, students read books on their level and are able to work closely with the teacher for help. Guided Reading is research-based program that has shown to be very effective in growing readers. While the teacher is meeting with small groups, the rest of the students will be busy working on differentiated assignments, such as word work, writing, independent reading, and buddy reading.
My students need book boxes in able to work independently during our Guided Reading block.
Students will be able to browse our classroom library to check out books that interest them. We will have many lessons on checking out “just right” books that they can read independently. Students will also select books that they want to read with a partner or difficult books that they want to “picture walk.” As we transition to Guided Reading, students will become much more responsible over their choices and school supplies. Students will be responsible for selecting the correct books and keeping themselves accountable. They will also learn the importance of taking care of our books, as we share them with everyone.
We need enough book boxes for each student in our room to store their selected books. They will be able to grab their book box throughout the day to work on independent and buddy reading. We also need mailing labels so that I can label the books with its reading level. This is an ambitious change that we are all very excited to take on. Thank you for supporting our classroom!
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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. Durrough and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
