This is part 2 of my project!!! When you're first learning to read, you want to read EVERY book you can get your hands on! The little hands in my classroom need some "just right" fiction books to encourage that love of reading by providing them with opportunities to read more often and for enjoyment!
Teaching kindergarten provides the opportunity to witness daily "magical" transformations in the students I have the opportunity to teach in my classroom.
Through the year I have the opportunity to watch them grow to become amazing readers, authors, mathematicians, scientists, and artists. While I view all of these areas of learning to be extremely important, I believe providing a strong balanced literacy background in kindergarten is key. Many students in our school enter into the classroom having very limited exposure to literacy and often cannot identify the letters in their own name, let alone all 52 uppercase and lowercase letters in the alphabet.
We have a high ELL population and an even higher number of students on free and reduced lunch. Our school is in the process of becoming a Title 1 school in order to further benefit the needs of our students based on the high poverty levels in our area.
My Project
As part of a balanced literacy instruction, I use "Reading Workshop." Students are taught a mini-lesson about reading strategies and then given the opportunity to read independently with books that interest them. This gives me time to conference with students to determine if they are reading "just right" books and check in on their fluency and comprehension.
My students need a leveled library to enhance their daily literacy learning. My students LOVE having this opportunity to read books they choose; however, our book supply is VERY limited. The books we use are a random collection of donated books supplemented by a small supply of leveled books from our school library. This small supply is shared by FIVE sections of kindergarten. Having to share books means we can't keep them for very long, making it hard to give the students "just right" books that they can keep in their book boxes for longer than a couple days. They need these books so they can practice and enhance the reading skills they are acquiring so rapidly.
Providing my students with the beginnings of a fiction leveled library will give them the opportunity to enhance their love of reading through learning how to pick out "just right" books that interest them and are at their level!
I can't wait to watch my students year after year take ownership of this opportunity while they learn how to take care of "our" library so future kindergartners can have the same reading opportunities as they do.
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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. Jensen and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.