Please Help Our Library Grow!

Funded Nov 8, 2017

I can not begin to express my gratitude to your kind and generous donation to our classroom. When my students first saw the books that you purchased for us they were thrilled. I am a new teacher and I have a very limited library. The books I have are hand me downs from past teachers and any books I have been able to purchase for my class. Receiving the shipment of so many wonderful books was such a gift for our class. My students are all deaf or hard of hearing and they are learning listening and spoken language. Many of my students have language delays and concepts take a significant amount of time and exposure to understand. The books you sent provided us so many different ways to learn and incorporate activities that build language.

I was able to read the book to my students and allow them to discuss what they noticed in each of the stories. I begin by doing a picture read first. This means that I will go through the book and talk about the pictures, and I will read very few if any words from the book itself. I will allow the students to discuss what they notice about the pictures and give them an opportunity to use their imagination. This is a great strategy to build language and understanding. After a picture read, I will then read the story to the students, allowing them to tie in their previous ideas to the story itself. After, we do a variety of activities that involve the story. This allows me to expand their learning into many different areas such as writing, math, and english language development.

A book may seem like a simple thing, but for my students it is invaluable. We are able to learn so much from a book and the children truly are interested in learning and exploring. After reading a book with the class, I will return it to the library and all of the students want to read that book. Listening to them retell the story to their classmates is one of the most incredible and rewarding things to see as a teacher.

Thank you for giving my class the opportunity to read, learn, and experience these books. We will use them all year and for many years to come.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Gurnick