Student Reading Development Requires Quality Texts
My students need to have access to the core texts for our reading support course.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Dolan's classroom raised $760
This project is fully funded
My Students
Our school is a diverse community of learners and educators, and we are stronger for it. Our students come from all over Oakland, and they bring a variety of languages, experience, and history with them to our gorgeous 40 acre campus.
We are a Title I school, but despite the lack of funding we have a robust academic community.
Our students often have many obstacles to navigate, from long commutes, housing insecurity, and institutional disparity, yet they thrive when given the opportunity. We were informed today that our district has no available funding for the materials, so we are coming to you to help us provide this unique opportunity to our students.
My Project
The students in our reading support course are currently reading multiple years below grade level. The students selected are not ELL, or SPED, but rather those who slipped behind in the fundamentals of reading comprehension and fluency. We selected the STARI curriculum based on the impressive data that shows the success the program has had in districts similar to ours. In addition to the success rate, we found that the content of the curriculum is particularly engaging for our student population. Texts such as Game touch on issues ranging from identity, racism, immigration, and class. The supporting materials help students to hone the skills needed for critical engagement with the texts. The binders requested are essential to hold the student workbooks. Due to the budget we are printing them onsite.
Critical thinking is crucial to academic success, but a student can not engage in high level analysis if they are struggling to get through a page of reading.
STARI directly addresses this by building up a student's reading stamina, developing comprehension skills, and demystifying decoding. However, the genius of STARI is that it does not stop with simply supporting students basic understanding of the texts. The curriculum is student focused, and rooted in academic discussion. Students are given scaffolds that allow them to engage in critical response, debate, and in doing so helps them develop their own academic voices.
Our course aims to provide each student with individual new books in order to meet the needs of our struggling readers, some of whom have never finished a book due to sheer frustration. This can not be emphasized enough. Too often the students who need the most encouragement are given the poorest standard of materials.By providing our classes with quality materials we are sending a positive message.
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. Dolan and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
