My students need library books at higher levels (they need a challenge!), ink for printing research projects, and paper in order to participate in successful learning experiences!
In our integrated co-teaching classroom, we welcome the students into our classroom and without fail, our students respond with an optimistic smile and a silly “good morning” before entering the room to begin learning. While we have endless reasons for personally greeting each student by name and with a handshake, our first priority is for the students to understand they are important, they are seen, and they are now being taken care of and protected once they enter our school. Many of our students walk into our classroom carrying the weight of their challenging personal lives and experiences. Therefore, we feel that it is tremendously important to instill a sense of a warm family environment in our classroom community.
The majority of our students are learning English as a brand new language.
Twenty-three of these children speak Chinese as their first language, two speak fluent Spanish, and one speaks fluent Polish. We know that it is our job to provide our students with the proper materials they need in order to continue to learn and explore the English language in productive and engaging ways.
My Project
As co-teachers of students who speak English as a brand new language, we strongly believe in the power of our classroom library. Giving students interesting books to read at their specific reading level plays a vital role in their literacy development. It is critical to instill a sense of wonder and excitement when it comes to reading literature, especially at such a young age. Our goal is to get our students excited about reading and writing, and to be proud of the progress they have made over the course of the school year. As the end of the academic year approaches, we have had the pleasure of witnessing our students move up reading levels and improve their written communication skills.
The donations we receive for this project will be spent on books to challenge and interest our young readers.
We also hope to purchase copy paper and printer ink so that we can provide our students with experiences using technology such as writing and publishing articles and research papers. We have watched as our students outgrow many of the books in our classroom library. Since our students do not have access to technology at home, we would love the opportunity to provide our children with the experience of typing up their written work and publishing that work to display for the school community. It is our job to assist in their college and career preparedness, and exposing them to such technology is imperative. We are confident that with these supplies we can provide a more appropriately challenging environment for our students.
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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. Skorka and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
