My students are a diverse group of kids from different socioeconomic levels, neighborhoods, and even countries. We are a Title I school and have a large military population. Because our school has a large military population, we have students that come from all over the world with a wide variety of interests and experiences.
While many of my students love to read, I still have a few that struggle with finding books of their interest.
For this reason, throughout the year we do a couple of novel units and read-alouds to keep my struggling readers engaged.
My Project
A class set of the novel, A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park will allow my fourth graders to follow along with the Global Read Aloud we will be participating in this October. While students benefit from listening to a read aloud, having the hard copy in front of them provides the visual impact of the words in addition to the expression and fluency provided by my voice.
A long Walk to Water tells two stories.
One is a biographical narrative of Salva Dut, a boy from Sudan who was forced to flee his village in order to survive. Salva spends many years in refugee camps before arriving in America to start his new life. The second story is a fictional narrative of a girl named Nya who is from the same region as Salva. Instead of attending school, Nya spends her days walking to get water for her family.
Participating in the Global Read Aloud with these books will allow my students to make connections with other students their age from all around the world. My students will be introduced to the issues other children face on a daily basis, and we will discuss these issues and share our unique perspectives through technology like Google Hangouts, Skype, FaceTime, and Padlet.
Having such a large military population in our classroom I have students that come from all around the country and world. Reading this book and learning about the accounts of two children will help promote awareness and understanding not only for what is going on around the world, but will also create understanding and awareness for each other in our own classroom.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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. Schiavone and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.