Celebrate Black Teachers and Students
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
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Mrs. Andrus from Newport News VA is requesting books through DonorsChoose, the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
My students need novels that relate to them to read during our novel study units throughout the year. This book will be engaging for students as it connects to them and is also a graphic novel.
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
Students at Crittenden are some of the most amazing kids I have ever met. My students carry so much burden and stress due to poverty, broken families, and violence. Nonetheless, they come to school every day and continue to be resilient.
As an educator I am often shocked by the lack of equity in our schools today and that is very obvious in the setting work in.
Luckily, our district can pride itself on putting students first and trying to give our students every opportunity but sometimes it is just not enough.
Something that really struck me this year is the lack of books for students to read that are about kids of color. We have minimal reading resources that reflect who are students are and the issues they face growing up in an urban setting. My librarian and I recently purchased a few short story graphic novels that deal with these topics and our students devoured them. What this told us is that students WANT to read and WANT to learn, what we are doing wrong is not providing them with the right resources to THRIVE.
GOALS/OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT:
To engage struggling and non-motivated readers in fiction/non-fiction literature that connects to them.
This project will provide students who would otherwise "unplug" from literature the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussion.
INNOVATION/INNOVATIVE COMPONENT
The graphic novel unit will not replace existing curriculum, but extend an additional, differentiated, learning opportunity that will level the playing field for non-readers. Research shows that students are more likely to engage in meaningful discussion and written response when they working with an interesting and relevant topic. For struggling students, the images act as way of making difficult concepts and texts more comprehensible; they give student context to draw conclusions. For the advanced reader, the images provide extended understanding and the artist's use of panels and page layout, and graphics can become an extended study in visual literacy (Boerman-Cornell).
ACTIVITIES PLANNED
A 3-5 lesson unit incorporated at the end of the school year will introduce students to the language of visual rhetoric and literacy. Students will then read their choice of two graphic novels focused on teenage issues and evaluate the author's development of themes, characters, and conflicts. Literature circles, graphic organizers, and guiding questions will be used to encourage discussion and collaborative learning.
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