Reward Great Reading with a Special T-Shirt!

Funded May 3, 2022

I am writing to thank you again for your generous donation to support my class's reading project. I was really proud of their success with this, and I think I learned a lot of best practices about how to help students develop a love of reading. Your help with this project was a key part of it, and we are truly grateful to you.

Here are some of the components that made the project a success:

The first step was to match each student with just the right book. In order to do that, I consulted with my teaching colleagues and a couple of friends who are school librarians, and searched online book lists for books with, say, Muslim teenage characters, or popular young adult novels in Spanish, for example. I was able to buy some new and used books for the project, and find others in our classroom libraries and book room. By allowing students to choose their book, and by providing choices that reflected their interests and cultural backgrounds, they were able to select something that was fun and enjoyable, and suitable for their individual needs.

The second step was providing an environment for reading, so we took some time once a week to read the books in class. While many students chose to read on their own as well, others only were able to focus on reading in the classroom environment, so providing that time was important.

The third part was to encourage a climate of enthusiastic discussion of the books, and to do that I had them respond to generic prompts in an online platform about what they had read each week, and to respond to each other's comments as they often already do on social media. I also asked my colleagues to ask the students about the project and what they were reading while they were in other classes to develop the idea that reading was not just limited to English class, but could also help to develop social connections and lifelong learning habits.

But the last, and best, part only happened thanks to your generous help. To reward each student for their participation and effort, I was able to give every student the custom t-shirts with our school name, a picture of a book, and the words "We love to read" that this DonorsChoose project made possible. The students were very excited to receive the shirts, and to take the class pictures you see in the slideshow. One student told me that he planned to wear the shirt for the rest of the school year. I hope that by wearing the shirts, the students were letting others know that even though they were very different as readers, with different reading interests and levels, reading could still be accessible and fun for all of them. I think the shared project, and the shirts to celebrate that project, served to unify them as a class and gave them a sense of pride in their collective work.

Thank you again for helping us to celebrate this reading project. I hope that this experience laid the foundation for (or built upon) a life-long love of reading for some of the students, and I hope you will feel proud to have shared the honor of helping to make that possible. We really appreciate your love of reading, and your belief in and support of young people!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Roberts