Bring the "Lit" to VHS

Funded Oct 31, 2022

I am especially grateful for your donations that allowed me to purchase the literature that I was able to add to the bookshelf in my classroom. At this time, we have been able to read one of the titles, Enola Holmes: Mycroft's Dangerous Game, as a class. As a teacher, I have been able to read three of the other titles that I bought so that I could preview them to see if I could teach them in the future. I was pleasantly surprised that each of the books were so well-written and interesting for me to read as an adult. I may not have an opportunity to share them with my students this year, but they will definitely be in my future plans.

The book that we did read was a great choice because it was a beautiful book with colorful illustrations and it was written in the style of a graphic novel. It was also a short novel with only six chapters. My students are all reluctant to read and I do not think they are unique in this characteristic. It is rare to find any teen who will become interested in a book when a mobile device is nearby. However, for a few minutes a day for the few weeks that we were reading the novel, they were forced to put away their devices and become engaged in a piece of literature.

I thank the donors for that opportunity. I am not sure if the selections that were available in our book room would have been able to capture their attention as well as the book that I was able to purchase. One of my students has told me that the only books that he reads are graphic novels so I think that I selected the right title to utilize for classroom instruction. We were able to pull vocabulary from the novel and we were also able to apply Freytag's story pyramid to break down story structure. After reading the novel, we had an assessment and all of the students did very well. This success is shared with all of the donors who made it possible.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Morris