When Our Classroom Library GROWS, OUR Brains Will GROW, Too!

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My Students

As a 1st year teacher, I don't own many books. My heart broke when a student asked to read "The Relatives Came" and I had to tell her that I no longer had it because it was returned to the public library. Therefore, owning all of the books shared in class will allow my students to read them anytime!

I have a very diverse classroom, which includes students from 8 different countries.

We belong to a Title-1 school, so many of my students have not had the opportunity to travel and see the world around them. However, our classroom uses our imaginations to travel all over when we read books. My students love to get into our classroom library and read through the many books that I have. My students enjoy browsing through those books because many of them do not have the option to browse through many books at their own homes. Furthermore, they love taking books home to read at night, but about half of my students do not own books of their own, so I provide them nightly reading books to take with them. Reading plays a very important role in our classroom and I want to continue to keep their enthusiasm for reading going by providing many books for them to enjoy!

My Project

I believe having these books will help my students because they can read them anytime they want too. They have heard it during my read-alouds and now they can take these books and read them for their selves. Having the books available for my students to read in our classroom can create the beginning of "loving" their favorite book. I remember falling in love in with "Corduroy" after my teacher read it to me the first time and I kept that book in my desks for months and month, so I want to be able to provide that same opportunity for my students to learn about their "favorite book" in my classroom. Owning the books I share during our mini-lessons will give them the chance to take those books home and share it with their families and it will also help them remember what my lessons were about. I truly believe giving my students the chance to go back to the many books I share will help reinforce my lessons and grow their interests in the many genres of books that we hear about in class.

Do you remember the time that you fell in love with your favorite book?

It was probably when someone else read it to you. So think about my students and how providing these books to them can create many "favorite book" memories in my classroom. I will no longer have to barrow from other places and people and return them, but I can simply pull them from my collection and show my students where they can get it and keep it for themselves.