Past projects 6
Books Middle Schoolers Beg For
Funded Feb 27, 2025Thank you for putting these mysteries and more in students’ hands. In the second half of the year, the library dulls, so this infusion of fresh and hard-to-keep-on-the-shelf titles will be well received. There’s nothing so delightful as students smiling as they crack open brand new books. Can’t wait until this package arrives! Thank you!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lehn
They're Meeting the Author: Get Them the Books!
Funded Feb 14, 2024Before Junauda Petrus's visit this May, many of my students had never met an author in person, or had last done so in early elementary school.
Your gift of a class set of copies of Junauda Petrus's young adult novel "The Stars and the Blackness Between Them" allowed them to hold and read a text in their hands, and then meet the person who made it.
After reading the first chapter aloud in class, they were full of questions for Junauda. They wondered how long it took her and where she got the idea. They wondered what she was like in 8th grade and what advice she had for the young Black community in our school.
It was profound to see my students engage with "authorship" and creativity through meeting a living author who'd graduated from the same school district they're in. Thank you deeply for these books that deepened this learning even further.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lehn
Restock The YA Bestsellers Our Readers Can’t Resist
Funded Jan 17, 2024The books you bought are already flying off the shelves. Students are talking about and sharing copies of "The Hate U Give," "Concrete Rose," and "Dear Martin." They are reading!
These are the kinds of books that can spark a renewed or first love of reading in an 8th grade classroom. Here, we're fighting the distractions of the internet and cell phones more than ever, so books that suck students in are essential to overcome the itch to check messages.
Thank you for giving my students books to fall in love with. You change the trajectory of their lives when you turn reading into an effortless joy with books like these.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lehn
Stock Our Shelves With Black Joy & Civil Rights Heroes
Funded Jun 17, 2023During orientation I had a student tell me she loves reading about civil rights history, and now that these books you purchased are in, we have so many more books to offer her. These books full of civil rights heroes and Black joy will fuel connections with Black history all year, whether students want to learn about George Washington Carver (in a gorgeous children's book), the Black Panthers (in graphic novel format!) or Bryan Stevenson's or President Obama's paths in young-adult adaptations of their best-selling memoirs.
We're about to kick off our daily choice reading practice, and these are the kinds of books that kids can't help but pick up. You also bought us books that center everyday Black joy, like "School Trip" by beloved graphic novelist Jerry Craft and exciting new fantasy-adventure novels like "The Gilded Ones" by Namina Forna and "Kingston and the Magician's Lost and Found" by Rucker Moses and Theo Gang.
I cannot wait to put these texts in students' hands next week. Thank you for making this possible.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lehn
Reading Native Resilience, Beauty, and Strength into Middle School
Funded Aug 26, 2022I teach on native land in a middle school where about 7% of students identify as native. Yet our English classroom libraries had few if any texts by native authors. The three book sets you purchased - one for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade English classrooms - have transformed our depiction of native life and presence in our world.
You bought students native fantasy series, books about native star myths and inventions, biographies of native leaders, coming of age stories of contemporary native youth and even a native graphic novel about survival in the arctic.
All of our students read from choice books daily for 10 minutes, and now they have a variety of native voice books to choose from. Whether these books offer windows into native life or a mirror reflecting their own experiences, they are essential reading material for my students.
Thank you for giving students the native perspectives they need and deserve.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lehn
Irresistible Reading: Giver Graphic Novels for Middle Schoolers
Funded Oct 21, 2021We are finally in the middle of our Dystopian Book Club unit and our 8th graders have The Giver Graphic Novels in hand. There are so many reasons these texts are a great fit for the classroom right now, so let me name a few:
- students love graphic novels and after a long year this feels like a treat
- we can *quickly* read The Giver Graphic Novel together to introduce dystopian lit
- this way we have the rest of the quarter for students to pursue their own dystopian interests in Book Clubs themed around texts like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, etc
- dystopian lit like The Giver Graphic Novel helps teach students about the critical lens dystopian novels take on our society, which they can then apply to their own Book Club dystopian texts
- we're also practicing forming interesting and varied questions to prep for Book Club discussions and the slow unfurling of the dark side of The Giver society is rich fodder for question practice.
Finally, the best sign is that during our 10 min choice reading to open the hour, many students are *choosing* to forge again in The Giver Graphic Novel, even without my prompting. They're hooked, thanks to you.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Lehn
This classroom project was brought to life by Dollar General Literacy Foundation and one other donor.