Hooking Kids into Reading with African American Characters and High Drama Books!
The cost of five copies each of Summer of Secrets, Someone to Love Me, A Matter of Trust, The Bully, Blood is Thicker, Secrets in the Shadow, Lost and Found and Brother in Arms is $363, 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>.
Hello! I teach reading to 7th and 8th graders in Cabrini Green. All of our students are African American and all of them are on free or reduced lunch. Unfortunately, close to 100% of them are also reading below their grade level! Getting them to see that reading can be something to be enjoyed and that you truly can get caught up in a book as much as a movie or video game has been hard, but I'm working on it. A big part of what has gotten them reading has been introducing them to books with African American characters and inner-city settings they can identify with. They live in a rough neighborhood with dramatic, often struggle filled lives, and these are the types of storylines in books that "hook" them in.
I've done a lot of research to find books with characters and plots my students will identify with and pick up off the shelf on their own without me placing it in their hand! There's a series of books called the Bluford Series that I found and I had one copy of each. There's 10 books in the series and they're based on African American students in Bluford High School that face real-life situation like my kids do, such as gang violence, abusive relationships, family deaths, etc. They're written to be high-interest books for low-level readers and they're perfect for my struggling readers. My kids LOVE them and there are fights over who gets to read them next, and they're falling apart from constant use. I want to get several more copies of each book so more of my 70 students can enjoy these books. I've bought quite a few books for my classroom library with my own money because my school doesn't have a book budget, but I can't afford to do it anymore. I need help!
Please help us add these incredible books to our library so more of my students can learn what it's like to fall in love with a book and what it's like to read because you want to and not because you're told to!
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