Help me give my students new copies of A Child Called "It" - the 8th graders have been reading and loving this book for years and ours are falling apart.
The students in my classroom are vibrant, amusing individuals. They have life experiences that have developed in them a special kind of grit that can be difficult to come by and they have personalities and senses of humor that create a lot of fun in class. I am very proud of the fact that I have a multitude of races, religions, and cultural groups represented within the walls of my classroom and we all co-exist peacefully.
That said, many of my students come from low-income, high-risk backgrounds.
Many of them have not had regular access to books and have never developed a love of reading. So when we work really hard to find books that have educational value, are meaningful, and that the kids will learn to love. As often as we can, we intentionally make the learning culturally inclusive.
My Project
Every year our 8th graders declare how much they hate reading. Our first literature unit of the year is A Child Called "It" and students suddenly learn that they do, in fact, enjoy reading if it's a book they like. And they like this one. We are able to engage students in meaningful reading and learning through this story.
This story teaches empathy and compassion, it teaches resilience and survival, all while teaching to the standards, ensuring our students are learning important reading skills through this text.
This book is engaging and year after year the students continue to enjoy it. While we often make changes to our curriculum to ensure we are being culturally inclusive and addressing social-emotional needs, this text has stood the test of time. So much so that our current books are currently falling apart and being held together by tape. Our kids would really love to have new copies to love. This class set would be shared by multiple teachers.
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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. Wilmot and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
