My students need 8 personal and portable CD players and cassette players to independently gain literacy skills through active listening in my busy 2/3 classroom.
One teacher + 31 second and third grade students with a wide range of abilities and interests = one big challenge! To manage my busy classroom, I follow Daily 5 guidelines, which builds student responsibility and independence through meaningful literacy activities in reading, writing, and listening.
I am lucky to have a wonderful group of very eager learners.
The children have a full range of abilities in both grades, so I have the kids working in a variety of groups to meet their needs. The kids work within their own grade, as well as in many cross-grade groups & activities. Lessons run smoothly, largely due to a wonderful classroom structure called Daily 5. The kids regularly choose their own learning activities from the options of Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Writing, Word Work, and Listen to Reading. The kids are amazing in their ability to learn how to work productively within well-established classroom expectations. It is a joy to see them reading, writing books, sorting spelling words or correcting their own work. They may be working alone, with a partner, or in small groups. This frees me to provide direct instruction to other learning groups or to conference with students throughout the day.
My Project
My students need 8 personal and portable CD players and cassette players to independently gain literacy skills through active listening in my busy 2/3 classroom. The one component of Daily 5 which has been hard to implement is Listen to Reading. One of the facts of life in a classroom is that plug-in outlets are rarely placed in accessible areas of the room! Thus, it is hard to set up listening centers where they are comfortable for the listeners, and not disruptive to the other students. I have a large collection of books and stories on cassettes and Cd's but I am quite limited by the physical constraints of where to have one listening group (which could conceivably have up to 19 kids in it) while I'm teaching a math lesson with the other twelve kids! I have to schedule such activities very carefully. As many as eight kids at a time could silently listen to an assortment of stories if we receive the personal CD and cassette players I'm requesting. This "silent factor" would allow me the luxury of inviting kids to enjoy listening to reading throughout the entire school day.
My students have risen to all my expectations for being responsible active learners.
I'd like to expand their opportunities to enjoy books that may be beyond their current reading levels while listening to professionally read tapes and CD's. I know the kids would relish the special time with their own personal listening devices. Follow-up activities would include story sharing, reviews, and opportunities for expressing their experience through art. I'd love to offer them this chance!
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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 Mrs. Souza and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.