We are a Title I school with a total enrollment of over 700 students in grades PreK-through 5th. Our school is located in an urban setting. The school serves a diverse population where over half of the students are bilingual. Nearly 60% of the students are Hispanic, 17% African-American, and 12% Caucasian. Additionally, 99% of our students qualify for the free and reduced-price lunch program. More than three-fourths of the student population resides in low-income apartment complexes.
I am a librarian at this school who has embraced the makerspace movement and I have transformed my library into a STEM workspace.
Students come to my library not only to check out books, but also to create projects, work with various apps, create videos, and code just to name a few things. My library is happening place, where you will see students learning and exploring new ideas every day.
My Project
At my school 65% of the students speak Spanish. Our Spanish speaking students develop speaking, reading, and writing skills in English at school, but often go home to house that only communicates in Spanish. To develop those important early literacy skills and good reading habits we strongly encourage parents to read to or with their children each night.
The problem is our library does not have enough Spanish books to meet the needs of our students and families.
Due to a lack of books in the parent’s native language, a large portion of our Spanish speaking students do not get read to at home. This put’s our Spanish speaking students at a disadvantage to our other students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students that are read to at home have higher success rates in school. Furthermore, NCES found that parent involvement is linked to reading comprehension. Our parents are willing to read to their children, our school simply does not have enough Spanish books to meet their needs.
This project aims to fix this problem by adding more Spanish books to our library, so our Spanish speaking families can have materials to read with their children at home. The books will be in a special section in our library where students can check them out. I will also tell parents about this new section at our monthly Spanish speaking parent’s meeting. I will encourage parents to get a parent library card so they can check out even more books for their children.
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