We are an urban district, and we have over 90% of our students receiving free and reduced-price lunch. Many students begin school with no prior education at all. Our kindergarten students are already behind when they walk in the door on their first day. We also have students who move in and out of our school frequently. Our student population grew by one hundred students just last school year. Despite the disadvantages many of my students face, they are genuinely great kids. These kids just need extra time and attention to help them make the academic gains necessary to be successful.
The most important and enjoyable part of my job is intervening with students.
Getting to know each student and what motivates them is especially important. Through my interactions with students, I have found that when they are genuinely interested in something, they will work much harder to achieve their academic goals.
My Project
Reading aloud creates a classroom community by establishing a known text that can be used as the basis for building on critical thinking skills that are related and unrelated to reading. So many discussions are generated by reading aloud that can be used to encourage listeners to construct meaning, connect ideas and experiences across texts, use their prior knowledge, and question unfamiliar words from the text. Students can listen on a higher language level than they can read, so reading aloud makes complex ideas more accessible to students and exposes them to vocabulary and language patterns that are not part of their everyday speech. When I read aloud to my students I am giving them the opportunity to fall in love with reading. When we read aloud we are entering the world of magic, characters they can relate too, and an enriching vocabulary experience. We learn to empathize with characters and to find similarities and differences between their lives and ours. We find joy in the stories we read. There is nothing more important to me as a teacher than my students relating reading to the feeling of joy! These books would give us the opportunity to have a rich read aloud experience and deep, meaningful conversations.
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