The cost of this proposal is $543, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
Let me introduce my school, class and self. Vargas School is a K-5 school in the Sunnyvale School District located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nearly 40 percent of the school population consists of English Language Learners (ELL), students whose home language is not English, and a significant number of students on free lunch, two of our largest populations. Many of these students score in the bottom half of state academic tests.
I teach at the 3rd grade level and have an eager group of students who love to learn. Currently I have a significant number of English Language Learners in my classroom. Approximately 70% of my students are ELL. At home you would hear my students speaking such languages as Japanese, Spanish and Arabic. For many of my students, their only exposure to English content is in my classroom. In addition to my ELL students I have one student with Apsperger's Syndrome. My Asperger's student relies heavily on visual and auditory senses.
At the moment I do not have a full class set of one type of dictionary. Imagine having 20 students looking up the same word from 3 different dictionaries. Not only are the words and definitions on different pages, the definitions are each slightly different. This confuses the students and myself. When teaching students how to use a dictionary, it is unproductive to have each student using a different dictionary. A majority of the dictionaries that I have are also outdated. Most of our dictionaries are over 40 years old!
Communicating important vocabulary to students whose first language is not English can be difficult for both my students and myself. That is why I would like to have a class set of DK Merriam Webster's Children's Dictionaries. This dictionary uses both words and pictures to present vocabulary. It will allow my students to put words with pictures and then improve their vocabulary. As the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and my students would benefit tremendously from a dictionary they could both read and see. Amazon who sells this dictionary states, “We are happy to report that this fine dictionary is above and beyond our gold standard.”
Your support for my students by providing these dictionaries would boost their enjoyment for learning and improve their vocabulary skills. I hope you consider our request and choose to fund it.
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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 Mr. Vaughn and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.