Verbose Students Need Some Dictionaries and Thesaurauses
The cost of forty copies of the American Heritage Essential Desk Reference Set is $902, including shipping and <a target="new" href="http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm" onclick="g_openWindow('http://www.donorschoose.org/html/fulfillment.htm', 300, 800, 'fulfillwindow');return false;">fulfillment</a>.
My seventh-grade students insist on teaching me "street language" with their daily conversations. Since I do not live in East New York (where I teach), I will have to take their word on it; however, as their English-language arts teacher, I feel obligated to point to a thesaurus when certain words are used that are not admissible in polite society. I am impressed by their initiative as they reach for our worn out thesaurus when one of those aforementioned words appears in their writing--which brings me to my request for funding for some current resource materials.
Our six dictionaries were printed in 1977 and were intended for a younger grade. This fact has become blindingly apparent as my students fail to find the definitions of words from the literature we have been reading in class. We have one thesaurus to share among approximately forty students. I would thus like to request a full class set of dictionaries and thesauruses for my students.
Charles Houston Academy has a diverse population, which is typical of any New York City school, but the majority of students come from a low-income background. Buying a dictionary and a thesaurus for their children may not be a priority or even an option for some parents. This grant would be an enormous help! I would like to encourage the students' desire to reach for an adequate dictionary when I inform my chatty students that they are being loquacious. We managed to get through the book "The Mighty" by Rodman Philbrick with the main character's inventive dictionary, which was included in the back of the book. Now I would like my students to reach for a real dictionary as we begin to read the book "The Giver" by Lois Lowry.
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