We love listening to fluent readers! However, we're tired of hearing the same old thing (aka the teacher)! As animated as she may be, we'd like some variety. We have a few other fluency resources that we use, but we want a listening center. We would like to use it as one of our literacy stations.
My students are characters!
They have very unique and interesting personalities. There is never a dull moment in our room! They love to read and learn! We foster this as much as we can at school, but when most of them go home, it's a different story.
We live in a very small rural town in south central Iowa. We are part of a county, town, and district that tends to struggle financially. In our district, teachers have learned that grants can be our best friends (IF we get them)!
Although our town struggles, it exceeds expectations with the sense of community it offers. They try to provide the kids with as many opportunities as possible and do an excellent job in doing so. Along with that our district also tries to provide our students with learning opportunities when outside of school as well. Most of our students don't have a lot of reading materials at home. Most of our students are only seeing print while in school. So, we try to have them read any and everything we can!
My Project
Right now we have literacy stations that we rotate to daily. Since I am working with a small group at this time, I cannot read to another small group of students and give them the opportunity to listen to a fluent reader on a daily basis. This is an opportunity they desperately need as often as possible.
We have computer resources where the students can listen to books being read, but we cannot always access the laptop cart. If we had a the requested listening center, headphones and books we could use this as a daily center instead of having to take turns IF and WHEN the computer cart is available.
The more the students hear fluent readers, the easier it is for them to understand how they should sound when the read. We are struggling with reading a great deal and I am trying to provide every positive reading experience I can for them.
Think of what you do from the time you wake up in the morning till you have lunch.
How many times do you read in those few hours? Imagine if you couldn't read. Surviving on your own would be a struggle. Reading is the foundation of everything. All subjects will become next to impossible unless you can read. I would hate to run into a student 15 years down the road and see that they never learned to read. I don't want that, so I will provide them with anything I can to get them reading!
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