Now Read This! Help Inspire Students to Read More!
My students need over 50 contemporary novels like An Abundance of Katherines, Mosquitoland, and Never Fall Down to improve literacy and foster a love of independent reading.
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My Students
In a world of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat, a bookshelf and its contents can gather some serious dust, especially in a high school setting. Help me build a phenomenal classroom library with books including The Maze Runner series, Sarah's Key, and Asylum, to foster independent reading.
I teach in a low socio-economic area with diverse demographics in an urban public school district.
Budget cuts have halted any new purchases for the school library and our librarian has returned to the classroom, giving students limited access to the books. My students often have more on their minds than a trip to the public library to find a book. The books on my wish list are all books that my current students couldn't put down. I am more than a little proud when I overhear my students asking to borrow each other's books or having conversations about how they relate to the protagonist or how they have read every book by a certain author.
Unfortunately, our school library carries very few current young adult literature authors that could inspire students to recapture that love for reading they once had as elementary students.
My Project
One of the main reasons for building this classroom library is to give my students easy access to great books. I just want them to read. Often. And with zeal. (And then complete a book project, but that seems far less painful when it is a modern, interesting, book of their choice!) With 50 books like An Abundance of Katherines, Mosquitoland, and Never Fall Down, my students will have access to books that foster their love of independent reading.
Each quarter students must complete independent reading projects, which are done almost entirely outside of the classroom. These projects require students to read books of their choice and provide summaries, critiques, annotations, and identification of literary elements including themes, motifs, and character motivations. Exemplary projects are displayed in my classroom and the school library to persuade other students to read, too. What inevitably happens is that they choose a book, read it, and then...wait for it...recommend it to their friends and have intellectual discussions applying what they learned in English class to their own reading. It is an English teacher's dream (or at least one of them).
An updated classroom library will continue to inspire my students to read year after year.
Students will be more motivated to complete their book projects if they have access to new books. When students connect with literature, they begin to feel more connected to the world. They empathize with characters, travel to other worlds, explore their imagination, strengthen their vocabulary, and build their literacy. They become inspired. THAT is the kind of difference your donation will make.
More than three‑quarters 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 Ms. Lockhart and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
