Creating Lifelong Learners with New Nonfiction

Funded Aug 9, 2022

Thank you so much for your generous donation of nonfiction books to our classroom! When they arrived in September, I was so excited to read all of them and knew my students would be so engaged with nonfiction learning. In our reading unit, we learn how to read nonfiction books both for enjoyment and for gathering information, beginning the foundational skills of note taking that students will use for the rest of their academic careers. We also dig into biographies, noting both facts about important figures, as well as character traits for our favorite inventors, artists, and change-makers.

When we started our unit in November and I brought out the stack of books, students pored over the covers, hoping for their name to get called so they could read their first pick before anyone else.

Throughout the unit, I saw students sharing fun facts with peers, jotting on more post-its than ever before, and sharing insightful thinking into magnets, animals, the brain, and inventors of their favorite toys. As a class we dug into the story of the invention of Legos and the biographies of Aretha Franklin and the inventor of Crayola Crayons.

A few students in particular are benefitting greatly from your donation. One student, an English Language Learner from Yemen, has been so excited to "read" the pictures in each of these books - maps, illustrations, photographs, diagrams - that have greatly helped her reading skills to grow this year. Another student has already covered just about every animal book from the library has of course has read every book on the list about animals. These new titles showed him rare, unknown animals and new takes on his favorite subject.

Your donation has sparked a love of reading in many and for that I am deeply grateful. Thank you for your generous gift and investment in education.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Jacob