English to the Rescue

Funded Nov 20, 2020

Thank you so much for providing the resources needed to jumpstart our reading journey this year. As a first year teacher, I found myself thinking back to my high school days and how much fun I had in my English classes and what ideas I can bring to my students. I remember the engaging lessons and thinking how to show a parallel of what we learned in the book to our community or what we were currently going through.

After a survey with my students, I narrowed down some topics and activities that they enjoy and allow them to interact with their classmates. With distance learning still in effect, lessons are online and mostly through Google classroom and majority of the student prefer the texts being available online than having the print out versions. The Scholastic magazine is currently being used in all 4 grade levels. In my 9th grade English class, the students did an analysis between the impact of the Spanish flu and COVID-19. Students read testimonials and the history of how each of those pandemics effected the communities they live in. Having these new resources allowed my students to decipher the main points and make connections to their own personal experience during this pandemic. Scholastic Upfront also provided worksheets that the students were able to complete as if in class. For me, this helped in building a curriculum that still had the common core standards aligned.

One of the other articles we spent some time studying was from Scholastic Upfront as well. Our main focus was workers rights as this aligned with introducing the book study we are going to finish the year with. It is important to know a little bit about the history of the time the book is taking place so that one is able to see the connections more clearly. I found that using the previous issues from Scholastic Upfront allowed me to gather some articles that explained what was happening during the time frame of our book. Scholastic Upfront has a great feature in which their are 2-3 exile levels which makes it easier for me to share with my students and provide them with the text that best supports their reading level.

My students look forward to reading their scholastic issues and making connections to their personal experiences.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Magana