My students need a class set of popular series books, an additional choice or three when they want to read what comes next, 30 headphones and two Chromebooks for a variety of web-based literacy.
We are a Title I, brand new French dual language elementary school, the first of its kind in Texas! Our students speak English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, and several African national languages.
As a brand new school, we still are lacking in several essential items.
We have a challenge this year providing for all of the students' needs as we are slowly acquiring resources that take years to establish.
4th and 5th graders are faced with passing their standardized test in order to be promoted to 6th grade. I'm teaching 4th grader during morning 7am tutorials and I don't have much time to spark their passion for reading before the Reading Test. I recently went from 49 to 102 students that I serve in my Reading classroom, which actually is a very GOOD thing! But they don't know me that well yet. I asked this sweet-natured but shy group of kids this morning, "Be honest! How many of you enjoy reading?" and by their answers I know I must work hard to bring them engaging books that they won't be able to put down!
My Project
Our entire school district was affected by 2017's Hurricane Harvey. We had to delay the first day of school by two weeks. Fortunately, our school had no water damage but many surrounding schools were forced to send their students to our school until they can repair their damages. We hope our new friends can stay at our school for as long as they like, but we have run short of some supplies to prepare them for the fast approaching Reading and Writing state assessments. We need attention-grabbing, high interest yet low reading level books. Many are reading well below grade level, several are refugees, and some do not have books at home. But that had not dampened their spirits in the least! They are avid listeners of audio books, Kindles, and other text to speech programs.
We need 2 more Chromebooks to expand our class set of computers(from an earlier Donorschoose project) for the additional students to use literacy websites and online libraries.
With all of the different devices being used at once in our classroom, we need a class set of headphones (I already have jack splitters for when students share devices and they both plug in headphones) so the cacophony does not distract them from their studies.
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