Look It Up! 11th And 12th Graders Need Dictionaries!
My students, juniors and seniors at a public high school, need access to dictionaries in the classroom to help with ACT preparation, comprehension of literature and expansion of their vocabulary.
Eager students need access to dictionaries - they want to be able to answer the question "what does that mean?" and share knowledge with their classmates! Many of the juniors and seniors at this neighborhood public school are the first in their family to come this far with their education. They are proud of the work they've done and are excited to go on to and succeed in college, but they need help with their vocabulary.
With only one computer in the classroom, and only a couple of battered pocket dictionaries, students do not have the ability to look up unknown vocabulary words that come up in the literature that we read.
With a classroom set of 15 dictionaries, students can work in pairs to define unknown words as they come up in the literature. They can also use the dictionaries to help them prepare for the challenging vocabulary section of the ACT. As my students move on to college, a general improvement of their vocabulary understanding and vocabulary usage will get them on par with other college freshman who have had more formal vocabulary instruction.
Your help will insure that my students can be empowered and proactive learners, looking up words on their own and sharing their knowledge with their classmates. It's a basic need, absent from the classroom, that would be greatly appreciated by both students and teacher. Hard-bound, full-size dictionaries will be utilized daily and last for years to come.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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