Approximately 72% of the children in our school qualify for free or reduced lunches. Most of our students come from homes where parents lack the time and resources to provide enriching activities for their children. I teach a self-contained first grade class. I usually have 20-24 children. Each year I have 1 or 2 mildly to moderately handicapped children in my classroom.
During the 2008-2009 school year, I will have a child who is a selective mute. He does not speak at school. He has attended our school through Pre-K and Kindergarten, and I have been trying to learn from his previous teachers about things that have been helpful in working with him. I teach all subject areas to all of these children.
During the summer I attended a training to learn new methods of teaching reading. I plan to use the Literacy Work Stations and small group activities that I was introduced to during this training. One of the Work Stations I would like to set up is a listening center.
To make a listening center most effective, the children will need to be able to hear what is being read to them. To assist them with connecting words with written text, they will each need to be able to see the text as the story is being read. Many children are very sensitive to loud noises while others need things at a higher volume level to hear. This listening center has individual volume controls on the headphones, so the children can turn their headphones to a comfortable volume for them. Since I will be working with a small group while some children are using the listening center, it is also important that the children I am working with are not distracted by the story being read. The listening center with headphones will allow everyone to hear and attend to their task at hand.
Your help will make it possible for my students to be exposed to a larger variety of books during each day. This will expand their knowledge and vocabulary by introducing them to places and things that they have never seen. It will also increase their love for books and their reading skills. One of the common characteristics of successful readers is that they have been read to and with frequently when they are young. Many of our children have missed this during critical years, but, with your help, we can still provide this for them now.
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