My wonderful students have a vast range of reading abilities and interests this year, as any other year, of course. They love everything from manga and graphic novels to sci-fi and murder mysteries. This is a very low-income area with a high number of ESL students where a lot of my kids are not often encouraged to read at home for a variety of reasons. Several of them don't have access to our school library due to book fees that their parents can't afford to pay.
My Project
My 7th grade students' have a wide range of abilities and interests in middle school, as well they should! I serve a low-income and high ESL population who like to read all sorts of stuff. Our school library does a great job trying to cater to those needs, but the problem is that if a student loses a book and can't pay for it, they are no longer able to check out any book from any library in the district. This means that some of my students lost a book in 1st or 2nd grade and haven't been able to check out a book since!
My hope is that my classroom library will serve those who are not allowed to check out from the school library because they can't afford to replace a lost book; sometimes, that fine is years old, which means I have some students who haven't checked out a book for personal enjoyment for years.
I have tried to make my book list diverse and age-appropriate including titles across genres, formats, and interests.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I do have a "classroom library" already (it's that tiny, piddly shelf in the right bookcase in my picture), but it is ancient and crumbling and uninteresting to the majority of my students. I am hoping that fresh, new, modern books will help reel in those reluctant readers who need access to something they want to read.
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