My Students

My students love to learn about real-life stories, animals, and situations. They thrive when they can connect what they are reading to what is going on in their own lives.

I teach 5th grade at a Title 1 school in a district with 7 elementary schools.

Our school is the lowest performing and the students have many needs that aren't being met. Many of the kids go home to no parents to help them with their homework because they have to work multiple jobs. Because my school is located in an area where there are many apartment complexes, the move-in and move-out rate at our school is very high. On the first day this year, 13 out of the 26 children in my classroom were new to our school, and I've already had 3 move-ins and 2 students move away. The students at my school have low proficiency rates in many areas because they move around so much and miss a lot of school. They love to learn and coming to school gives them a stable environment with a schedule they can count on, and adults who are there to help them learn and succeed.

My Project

With the common core, there is a large focus on being able to read and understand nonfiction text, as well as write an opinion essay with specific facts and details based on articles and diagrams. In my classroom, I like to use magazines written for kids such as National Geographic, Scholastic News, and Time for Kids because those resources provide amazing stories written at the level of my students with pictures and details they can understand. When we read articles in class, we do many different activities with them, such as practice fluency, find the main idea and supporting details of the text, create summaries, write our own informational pieces based on the information in the articles, create brochures highlighting an idea in the text, and form an opinion connected to the article and back it up with specific details and pieces of evidence from the text.

These Time for Kids magazines will help my students reach their Language Arts proficiency goals by allowing us to practice close reading nonfictional text.

Because the articles are written on topics that are actually happening at the current time, it will keep them engaged and excited to learn. Many of my students don't have the privilege of having their parents help them with their homework and read with them at home, so being able to touch on current events in the classroom will keep them involved!