Books Needed for Classroom Libraries
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My name is Gabriela González and I am the instructional coach at Will Rogers Learning Community in Santa Monica, California. I am writing this Go Fund Me in support of my teachers to help them build their classroom libraries.
Our school has been known to be innovative and our teachers are always willing to learn new pedagogical approaches in order to reach all of our students and help them realize their full potential. An approach our school has taken on recently is Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Teaching Reading and Writing. This is a great program that is based on continuous research on child development and the best instructional practices in reading and writing.
Research shows that the more students read, the better they are at reading. Students who read for extended periods of time at school and at home are able to improve their word attack skills, become more fluent, and have a richer vocabulary. All of this leads to stronger comprehension skills and a life-long love of reading. Students who don’t have enough opportunities to read for long periods of time and don’t have access to a wide variety of books, not only don’t make progress at the same rate, but the achievement gap between them and their peers widens. This creates a sense of frustration in our students and, eventually, they stop trying.
Our school is a Title I school, which means that we have a high percentage of students who come from low-income families. Our families are wonderful, caring people and their first priority is to make sure that their children have their basic needs met. This means that we have parents who work 2 and 3 jobs for long hours and, many times, at night, so they can’t always make sure that their children are reading every day for the amount of time that is necessary. To help support all of our students, It is important for us to be able to stock our classroom libraries with enough books, so that our they can be reading constantly, have a variety of books to choose from and at appropriate reading levels.
Research shows that kindergarten through 2nd grade students should be reading 10-15 books per week. There are 36 weeks in a school year, so to accommodate the reading needs of just one student, a classroom would need to have at least 360-540 books. Some of our classrooms have less than 200 books and don’t have a good mix of genres or enough books at each level to sustain the amount of reading our diverse readers need to do each and every day to make progress. If we were to buy the book collections that are recommended by the Reading and Writing Project for all of our classrooms, it would cost $161,000.00 plus we would need to purchase book bins (about $4-8 each) and bookshelves ($50-100 each) to create an easy system for students to choose and check out books.
I am not asking for the full amount, because it’s so overwhelming, but the more money we raise, the more books we can have available for our students. We appreciate any help we get and our students will benefit greatly from the books we can buy for them. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Our school has been known to be innovative and our teachers are always willing to learn new pedagogical approaches in order to reach all of our students and help them realize their full potential. An approach our school has taken on recently is Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Teaching Reading and Writing. This is a great program that is based on continuous research on child development and the best instructional practices in reading and writing.
Research shows that the more students read, the better they are at reading. Students who read for extended periods of time at school and at home are able to improve their word attack skills, become more fluent, and have a richer vocabulary. All of this leads to stronger comprehension skills and a life-long love of reading. Students who don’t have enough opportunities to read for long periods of time and don’t have access to a wide variety of books, not only don’t make progress at the same rate, but the achievement gap between them and their peers widens. This creates a sense of frustration in our students and, eventually, they stop trying.
Our school is a Title I school, which means that we have a high percentage of students who come from low-income families. Our families are wonderful, caring people and their first priority is to make sure that their children have their basic needs met. This means that we have parents who work 2 and 3 jobs for long hours and, many times, at night, so they can’t always make sure that their children are reading every day for the amount of time that is necessary. To help support all of our students, It is important for us to be able to stock our classroom libraries with enough books, so that our they can be reading constantly, have a variety of books to choose from and at appropriate reading levels.
Research shows that kindergarten through 2nd grade students should be reading 10-15 books per week. There are 36 weeks in a school year, so to accommodate the reading needs of just one student, a classroom would need to have at least 360-540 books. Some of our classrooms have less than 200 books and don’t have a good mix of genres or enough books at each level to sustain the amount of reading our diverse readers need to do each and every day to make progress. If we were to buy the book collections that are recommended by the Reading and Writing Project for all of our classrooms, it would cost $161,000.00 plus we would need to purchase book bins (about $4-8 each) and bookshelves ($50-100 each) to create an easy system for students to choose and check out books.
I am not asking for the full amount, because it’s so overwhelming, but the more money we raise, the more books we can have available for our students. We appreciate any help we get and our students will benefit greatly from the books we can buy for them. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Organizer
Gabriela Gonzalez
Organizer
Santa Monica, CA
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