Our school is a district, county, and state leader in student achievement. Both students and teachers strive to exceed the standards, never resting on our laurels. We constantly evaluate if there is a better way to teach, a better way for students to learn, and our kids always rise to the occasion. Part of that involves having the most cutting edge or updated materials available.
Our students are thirsty to expand their knowledge base, and they are voracious readers.
The media center, despite its size and availability of online subscriptions, cannot keep up with our students' appetites for books.
As their teacher, I want to provide high interest curriculum that will entice, engage and satisfy our diverse student population.
My Project
To encourage close reading, a component of Common Core, I need compatible, current texts. The students form groups based on genre (fiction or non-fiction) and then sub-genre/ title. Each group will have a text that they will read together, at a pace they set, necessitating several copies of each text. The classroom library periodically needs to be refreshed to respond to respond to changing times and book attrition.
My DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) system provides students opportunities to practice standards-based instruction using independent choice reading material.
Each session they have roles, such as discussion leader, where they choose from a list of prepared topics, such as: For different books by the same author, what similarities and differences do you notice in the author’s voice and style across books? The result is a structured conversation around the portion in the book, teaching them how to discuss a reading past "I liked it." Each session they also complete a 'bookmark sentence,' which is a starter based on state standards, such as: One word/phrase I do not understand is, but based on the context I think it means.
For every 5 group sessions, each student completes an independent mini report, with topics such as: In a CEE exploratory paragraph, identify the genre: is this an autobiography? A biography? An expository text? Discuss how the point of view of the narrator- 1st person (autobiography), 3rd person limited (biography), 3rd person omniscient (expository) affects the information you receive. Be sure to use quoted evidence, and to include the genre and how narrator affects information in the claim/ topic sentence.
DEAR is a beloved feature of my class and has been for over a decade; the only downside is when students cannot access the book they truly want to read!
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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 Mrs. Nelson and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
