High Interest Books for Struggling Readers and ELLs
My students need graphic novels and sports books such as Manga Math Mysteries, Brown Girl Dreaming, variety Sports pack, The Elsewhere Chronicles, and Maniac McGee.
This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
I give my students free choice reading time each day, because they will improve faster when they can read things they enjoy. I want them to have the opportunity to enjoy the magic of losing themselves in a book they are really interested in, before they go off to high school and time runs out.
I work with a diverse student body, with varied ethnicity and multiple languages, representative of our global community.
One third of my students are English language learners, so having graphic novels are not only of interest, they actually promote increased vocabulary acquisition. Our school is a Midwest urban middle school, where 100% of our students receive free breakfast and lunch.
My Project
Our school library is outdated, so teachers like me promote reading in class with our own classroom libraries. Having popular, classic, and eye-catching books will help me engage the struggling readers I teach. At least four days a week, my students are rotating in stations to have cooperative learning experiences in small group, software literacy instruction at their own pace in computers, and free choice reading time in my mini library. With a plethora of new books to choose from, my students will be excited for their library time.
Giving urban middle school students the opportunity to read and check out books that truly interest them is the best way to get them hooked on reading and on an upward path to success in school.
I teach my students new strategies each week to help them understand what they read and be accurate with pronunciation, but without good books to choose, they spend their library time pretending to read instead of getting engaged and practicing the strategies they learned.
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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. Quimby and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
