Do you remember knowing all the fairy tales and folk tales by heart before you ever entered kindergarten? Many of us had them read repeatedly to us at home. My students, from many diverse backgrounds, did not have this advantage and do not know the fairy tales and folk tales so common to most of us.
My young students are eager to learn and succeed, and hungry to read and get their hands on easy reader books that they can read independently.
Our school, a Title I site in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood, is home to many students of varying backgrounds, ethnicities, and diverse cultures. We may not have much money, but we have a lot of heart!
My Project
Having these easy-to-read folk and fairy tales will not only provide our students with books they can read independently, but will also help to build cultural literacy as well. The rich satisfaction of being able to read books on their own with engaging stories, lessons, and morals is beyond compare. It will also offer all students the opportunity to become familiar with these traditional, ageless stories so many of us grew up with at home and came to school already knowing by heart. These stories also help facilitate the language and reading skills of summarizing and being able to verbally retell stories, both skills required by the state's standards of learning.
Beyond the obvious of providing easy reader books for independent reading and building cultural literacy, these books can provide a foundation for class discussions on character traits, morals and lessons learned by the characters, a hallmark of folk and fairy tales.
In addition, these books provide a perfect springboard for other reading skills in context: comprehension, sequence, prediction, drawing conclusions, inference, summarizing, retelling, - the skills needed to make successful readers.
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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 Ms. Betz and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.