Maria Montessori said, "Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core." My students are enthused! They thirst for knowledge and need more books to feed their growing imaginations.
My students are the founding class of a brand new Montessori Charter school in South Carolina.
I have a diverse class of twenty-five first, second and third graders. Although my students come from a variety of backgrounds, there is one thing they share in common: they love stories. They write and share their own stories (spooky ones and silly ones especially). They love to sit in a corner, side by side and read aloud to one another. Each afternoon, they hang on my every word with wide eyes, enrapt, as I read aloud classic children's authors like Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary. They simply cannot get enough of stories.
My Project
Montessori classrooms use a multi-aged, peer mentoring style of learning where children communicate ideas and teach one another. Our classroom needs multiple copies of books so that my students can share their amazing ideas about the literature they read. With sets of high quality reading books at different reading levels, all my students will have access to books that they can read and share with others. With these books, my younger students will practice reading comprehension, decoding and vocabulary building strategies through guided reading groups and book discussions. My older students will read aloud, discuss, and write about quality children's novels.
We have a brand new school offering a new public school choice for families in our county.
With every new school, students, parents and teachers take a leap of faith into the unknown. It is scary, and it is awesome. My students have come so far in the last five months and we need a library in our classroom that will give them the skills to keep reading, keep growing, keep sharing, and put their amazing ideas into action.
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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. Bacon and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.