Sunshine State Books for Special Education Literacy Support

School:: Seacrest Country Day School - Lower School
Subject:: Language Arts
Teacher:: Bridget Killian
Students Impacted:: 30
Grade:: K-12
Date:: August 25, 2023

Investor

Thank you to the following investor for funding this grant.

A Champion for Learning - $1,107.88

Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 20

Our Learning Lab received fundiing to purchase the Sunshine State novels from both the grades 3-5 as well as the 6-8 booklists. This has had a tremendous impact within the Learning Lab as many of our students read within varying abilities.

We are able to promote both independent reading as well as novel studies based on the genre, accessibility and motivation of the novels. Most of our students tend to shy away from reading, and when they can be presented current novels of relevent topics, they can access prior knowledge to make reading enjoyable.

When considering novels studies this year, we were able to utilize many of the Sunshine State novels to connect to the place - based opportunities our students experience while at Seacrest. The novel Treasure Tracks, supported our 6th graders as they travelled to the Keys in the fall to experience Marine Lab as well as my current grade 7 readers thoroughly enjoyed reading The Curse on Spectackle Key, again tied to the Keys and their place based experiences as a part of our science programming.

All in all, having access to these amazing novels, vetted by the phenomenal board of media specialists with SSYRA, has made reading not only a fundamental need met, it has also inspired reluctant readers to dive into a good book!

Original Grant Overview

Goal

Our goal for purchasing these books is to afford students the opportunity to learn through a variety of literature. The students in within our Learning Lab program often struggle with language based learning needs, and to give them authentic texts that hold meaning and structure to their learning would be wonderful.

What will be done with my students

We would like to read for pleasure the many fantastic books that the Sunshine State Young Readers Award Book List offers. We will also use these books as mentor texts as we explore and learn from the authors who have written the books. We will look at the use of language and text structure so that even our youngest readers can see how authors, and illustrators, work together to provide the movie in our mind that books give us at any given time. We will also show students how to take the skills taught to those with language based learning needs can be pulled from a mundane lesson and applied to the books we see all around us.

Benefits to my students

The Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) Program is a statewide reading motivational program for students in grades 3 through 8. The purpose of the SSYRA (as stated by the Florida Association for Media in Education) The SSYRA "Program is to encourage students to read independently for pleasure and to read books that are on, above, and below their reading level in order to improve their reading fluency. Sunshine State books are selected for their wide appeal, literary value, varied genres, curriculum connections, and/or multicultural representation. "
These books will benefit our students K-8 in that they have been selected by experts in the literary field and will bring our students with language based learning needs the authentic materials they need that will encourage them to enjoy books and the stories they bring to our vivid imaginations.

There are 15 books at each level K-2, 3-5, 6-8. For a total of 45 books. We would like to purchase 2 of each book, bringing the total to 90 books in all. The students that are enrolled with the Learning Lab program grades K-8 will have access to these books when they attend class in the Learning Lab on our campus.

Budget Narrative

I have researched the books to find the cost of each book found on the SSYRA books lists for K-2 (SSYRA- Junior), 3-5, and 6-8. The total reflects the cost of 2 copies of each book, for a total purchase of 90 books and 6% sales tax.

Items

#	Item	Cost
1	Sunshine State Young Readers Award Books K-2, 3-5, and 6-8	$1,107.88
	Total:	$1,107.88

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