Photography by 5th grade student, Angel Garcia Guzman.
Harrowing tales of hurricane survival, talking spiders, magic, and the sometimes funny, occasionally sad, and always tricky business of growing up. Grade 3-5 students and teachers can’t wait to get in and read all about it!
The opening of the grade 3-5 guided-level book room is a big deal to 5th grade student, Preshus Princess Aloha Elliot who told me, “I like guided reading because we get to learn about things like WWII,” and classmate Xavier Lopez who said, “We get to learn more things together. That’s really cool to me.”
How did a closet become an amazing book room for teachers to check out multiple copies of the same book to read with groups of students? 5th Grade teacher Kim Daly used DonorsChoose to fund the project, adding over 100 new books to those existing titles that were inventoried last year by parent volunteers: Noreen Powers, Arusha Hollister, Leah Barcan, and Kristin Shapiro. Ms. Daly and a group of current 6th graders then cleaned up the space and moved boxes of books from the lower school over into their new digs at the end of last year, which is where City Year Corps member, Rosie Clarke and myself found them at the start of the 2014 school year. With assistance from 5th Grade teacher Kate Davis, and a nifty ISBN scanner, we entered those 4,000+ books into a searchable database at Booksource and organized the books on the shelves. We could still use a hand labeling the individual books, so if you have time to lend to the project, get in touch with Ms. Daly.
A fan of the “Diary of the Wimpy Kid” series, 5th grade student Michael Polanco Colon wonders what he might read as he looks over the new books. With over 400 titles (representing over 4,000 individual books), the question isn’t “What are you reading together?” but “What are you reading next?”
Curley teachers Ms. Ferro and Ms. Peters both currently have their own DonorChoose projects they could use help with, so check them out and watch for more Curley teachers’ projects in the coming year.
