Rationale
I am a teacher with nearly a decade of teaching experience. I am currently serving as a sixth grade mathematics and a Response to Instruction and Intervention teacher who provides instructional intervention based upon student need in a demographically inner city public school. The city has a low tax base that funds the district. There are three housing projects that feed into the district. Several large tax-exempt buildings are housed throughout the district. Examples of these buildings are: a private college, hospital, county correctional facility, city government buildings, local library, an abundance of nonprofit organizations, and the county office building. The district also qualifies as a Title I School-Wide school. My grade level does not measure up to the set 63% goal of proficiency on Pennsylvania System of State Assessment (PSSA) Reading. According to the Report Card that was issued at the beginning of the 20010-2011 school year, the Accountability Report for students in grades 3 through 6 within the district fell 9% below the projected goal. In accordance with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Reading Independently is one of the lowest scored Elementary Reading Standards. When I delved into the subcategories, statistically the deficits are significantly lower amongst males, African Americans, special education students with an Individual Education Plan (IEP) and economically disadvantaged students. Many students find themselves crossing all four of those categories; therefore, encouraging non-proficient students to read independently is not the easiest of tasks.
The Beginning Reader
My love for reading began when I was a little girl. Every night my mother would tuck me into bed and read me a story from a large book of bedtime stories. As a parent, I continued the tradition and tucked my daughter into bed with her favorite book. My daughter is now eighteen years old. At any given time I can turn to her and mutter the phrase, "In the great green room." and without any hesitation, she responds, "there was a telephone and a red balloon." This dialogue between us came from the starting lines from Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon. This was a book that was read to her when she was only three years old. The strategy of being read to worked for both of us because we grew up to be avid readers.
Engaging a young reader can be done. At some point in his or her life, either the child was or was not introduced to reading. If he or she is reminded of the pleasurable experience he or she had as a child, it is favorable to rekindle that suppressed positive emotion. Alternatively, if the student is gaining the experience for the first time, the experience needs to be introduced. My objective is to create a union between the reluctant reader and the concept of reading for personal delight by introducing or reintroducing a love for reading.
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