Seeing Themselves in Their Books!
Funded Nov 18, 2024Thank you so much for your generosity. My whole reason for selecting the books I did was so that my students could see themselves, and others, in the stories we read. I wanted to incorporate more diverse texts into our classroom.
Our first unit after receiving our donations involved literature circles. I read the class "I am Golden" and we talked about various things that stood out to us in the text. This was a low stakes way to introduce the idea of lit circles. Next, I gave each student a role sheet and this time I read Marisol Macdonald no Combina/Does Not Match. This book was exciting because it is written in English and Spanish. Knowing that I had a large ESL population in my class (not all Spanish speaking) I read both the English and Spanish. My classes were so engaged and although my Spanish is pretty rusty, I explained that I ask them to speak in English all the time, even when they aren't comfortable so the least I could do was read in Spanish. Students filled out the lit role sheet while I read and afterwards, we talked about the various roles and what they put down on their sheets.
The novels provided have been added to our classroom library and students are enjoying having a larger variety of texts to choose from. We start class with 5 minutes of reading every day and these additional titles have been well received by all students.
We are eternally grateful for the kindness you all have shown us.”
With gratitude,
Mrs. Jackson