Help me give my students books that help build community and self-esteem. These books will help us start out our year by building community. Understanding Texts and Readers will also help me with my instruction in reading comprehension.
Our population is culturally diverse with students coming from all around the world. They speak many different languages and some don't speak any English when they join our class.
I teach in a smaller school in which 96% of students receive free and reduced lunch and the majority are ELL.
Because we are a smaller school, we often lack funding for learning tools. These students are resilient and come to school every day to learn new things. They work hard and want to learn skills that will help them reach their hopes and dreams for a bright future. These students are also filled with enthusiastic energy. They are kind, friendly, and are excited to be at school.
There are currently 25 students in my class. My students come mainly from Thailand, Burma, Somalia, and Mexico. This group of students are inquisitive and love to learn using hands-on activities. We are working on learning skills for their future.
My Project
Using the professional book, "Understanding Texts and Readers: Responsive Comprehension Instruction with Leveled Texts" by Jennifer Seravello, will help me better understand the comprehension part of reading and give me lesson ideas to help students with understanding what they are reading. I have a reading instructional book by this author and it has helped improve my teaching of reading in so many ways. It provides easy to follow lessons along with ideas for visuals to use with students.
Books are the gateway to our learning!
The picture book library that I have added to this project will add more multicultural books to my collection. The students will see themselves in these books. Not only that, these books were carefully chosen to help build community in our classroom in the beginning of the year. I will be using them to teach character and how they connect to the characters, setting and how it affects the characters and the story, and how to get along with others. Once students have heard these books and had lessons of building friendships, understanding others, understanding text, and how we are alike in many ways, we can refer back to these throughout the year. Once we have read them together, students will be able to read the books on their own.
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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 Mrs. Stern and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.