Imagine the difference students will feel about reading if they learn how to read with real world literature instead of from a reading text book! Help me achieve my dearest goal in teaching my 4th graders: to love reading and become voracious readers.
I love my students!
My students come from a middle, to low-middle class neighborhood. Many of my students at the beginning of the year groan and complain a little about reading. By the end of the year, I enjoy seeing a shift in their attitudes as they clamor to share their favorite books and experiences in reading with each other. By the end of the year, most of my students love reading and we are excited by the huge gains we see in their test scores, as we have explored and devoured literature in our reading book clubs in class using these types of books.
My Project
We use these books to run small reading groups similar to book clubs. The students are grouped by ability and choose a book from the sets that I have in my classroom. Because they choose the book and read it together, elements of positive peer pressure and accountability help students to read much more than they would on their own. Parents volunteer once a week to meet with the groups and lead a "book chat." These book chat meetings are modeled after what grown book lovers in the real world do as they read and discuss good literature together.
A huge advantage of these groups is that I can take time to meet with other groups during the book chats to teach reading skills and am able to apply them to the "real" literature they are reading in their groups instead of to reading out of a text book.
Please help me get more group sets of books to support this great reading program.
Choice is such a huge student motivator and the more choice my groups have when they are reading these books, the more they will learn to love reading.
More than a third 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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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. Witkamp and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
