This year on top of being a classroom teacher, I am also serving in a district literacy role. Our students, at all levels in our district, are authentic readers who devour books. Because of this, we need to make sure that our library is fully stocked with new, interesting, and diverse titles. In our small, rural school, our students are often isolated from the world and can feel hopeless at times. Sometimes they wonder if there is anything outside of what is right in front of them. I have found that, through books, students can see that their hopes and dreams are real and valid. They get to see others like themselves and I see the joy and realization it brings to them. I love seeing how their faces light up when they read a new book that they love.
Students will read if you give them the time, shelves full of books, and people around them who are great reading mentors.
The "shelves full of books" part is where we need your help. When students devour multiple books in a week, they need more and more titles to keep reading!
My Project
My students read voraciously. They are in constant need of access to more and more books. When you have such a small school, you have wonderful individual time with students and that independent encouragement as well as time and access to great books helps them grow and develop as amazing readers!
Students find their voice by reading books about both people like them and not like them.
Offering them this diversity of voices and perspectives helps all students, but one of the struggles of a small town is the lack of access to voices. We can go online and we can watch the news, but those are only snippets. Books offer a unique, in-depth look at what goes on in someone else's mind, allowing us to see that we're not alone.
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