I teach students from an at-risk area in an urban Nevada neighborhood. Many families are transient and move from school to school, which makes learning difficult. Also, many families work full time and struggle to meet their basic needs. Typically, many children start school far behind their peers from more affluent neighborhoods.
Regardless of their struggles, they love to learn and they LOVE to read.
Having new materials in the classroom really motivates them to try their hardest to succeed. It's important that our school year is spent on trying to close the achievement gap in as little time as possible. Having more access to learning materials is extremely beneficial to my young learners.
My Project
This year, I have 6 children who didn't learn to read in kindergarten or first grade. Our school doesn't have a complete reading program to help these most at-risk learners. My children come from high poverty homes. If they don't learn to read at school, they will not be provided the opportunity to learn to read from any outside tutoring source. Typically, children who do not learn to read within the first few years of school, end up in a special education program. I am trying to prevent this from occurring by providing the intervention they need in my regular education classroom.
As a result of not having a complete reading program to help these children, I am left putting different materials together.
This takes a considerable amount of time every year. By supplementing my materials with actual phonics workbooks, this will cut down my preparation time considerably. I will be able to put more time into improving my lessons to meet the needs of my children.
These phonics workbooks fit with the systematic explicit phonics model that I use with my intervention students. It will allow them to independently practice what they are learning after they meet with me every day in a small group.
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