Books and Buddies after Breakfast

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.

My Students

Can you recall when you were just learning to read? Can you recall how hard it was to find books that you could read without anyone's help? My students need to have books that are interesting to young readers, but are also books that they can read all by themselves.

"Will you listen to me read?" As primary students begin reading on their own, they want to show off their skills to a family member or to an older student.

Few of our primary students have very easy books at home, nor do they all have someone to read to, so Read to My Buddy gives them both. To help them become readers, they very need easy books that have a story, not just letters or lists of words to practice. Read to My Buddy provides students of all grades time to read before school. Instead of going out to play at recess after they have finished breakfast, primary students are paired up with our older students to read. As they begin to read independently, they need to practice reading. They need books that will not make them frustrated, but will make them feel like successful readers who love to read. For every child, becoming a reader is important, but for our children of poverty, it is critical. Without reading skills, students will not be able to do story problems in math.

My Project

In my building, only one or two children in Kindergarten classes know their alphabet or can write their names when they arrive in the fall. It is expected that, by the end of their kindergarten year, students are reading very simple stories on their own. To get there, students need a great deal of practice reading. Kindergarten students want to show off their reading skills, but few families have books that a kindergartener can read on their own. If children who are learning how to read can't practice the skills they are learning (or practice successfully), they become discouraged and reading becomes less of a joy and more of a chore. These books are very easy (usually only one sentence per page), and use words that kindergarteners can read with little, if any, help needed. As students read successfully, "Read this to me, please?" gradually becomes, "Will you listen to me read this? I can read it all by myself!" These books are books that a kindergartener can read "all by myself!"

Every morning, during Read to My Buddy, I get to see kindergarteners and first graders begin to become readers.

More and more, they come to me asking for books that they can read to their older buddies. When all of the books are checked out at the same time, and I have to tell a child they'll need to wait until someone else is finished reading it, a sadness creeps over their little faces. It's hard to tell a beginning reader you don't have a book for them. With these books, we won't have to.