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Goal

My goal is quite simple; I imagine it is one that most teachers strive to achieve each year with students. Yet, it is one that is so delicate and precise but also seems so obvious and powerful.
My goal is for my students to love to read.
Now, I realize how cliché this must sound: a teacher wanting her students to find the love of reading. Definitely easy for me to say, reading was my first true love. It was like this magic that I had found within myself that I wanted to share with everyone around me.
Yet, as simple as it may sound…that goal is becoming harder and harder to achieve. In my fourteen years of teaching, I have realized that so many children I encounter don’t believe in this magic. They don’t realize this wonderful power and ability that is within them all. Instead of magic, they see reading as a curse; something to dread day in and day out with every teacher they have each year.
I want to change that stigma for my students. I want to provide them with the resources to find the magic, believe in it, use it, and love it. I have a goal that my students will look forward to reading, without shame or worry about judgement, but with excitement.
The love for reading like no other.  

What will be done with my students

With this grant, I would hope that my students feel as if they have a comfortable space to relax and enjoy the art of reading. They would have the opportunity multiple times throughout the day to visit the reading area as well as use it to participate in group or partnered discussions. I would hope that even the most reluctant of readers would go to this space with a book of their choice, not because they were told to do so, but because they want to. This area could also be used as positive rewards for students following expectations and going above and beyond throughout their school day.
Currently, I have multiple ways of trying to engage and interact with their reading. I’ve attempted to create a “space” for reading on the carpet with a couple office chairs and string lights. I watch my students, daily, curl up on the office chairs or under a computer area to get some privacy. But, these are the students that have already found that magic….that have the curiosity and wonder and the excitement for reading. We go to this area in the classroom for our daily read aloud, where students are intrigued and engrossed in a novel. Class discussions and predictions during the read aloud all occur in this “safe” space. To engage my students with reading they are able to write fun quotes from books they are reading on a chalkboard wall. Since reading takes us all around the world without leaving our classroom, the students can map out the adventures and places they have visited because of reading. Every Friday we have a First Chapter Friday—where I try to share books of different genres to intrigue my students enough to want to read more than just the one chapter. What is missing within all of this is the feeling. The feeling of comfort and relaxation while becoming engrossed in a novel. The coffee shop feel mixed with the homeliness of your own bed combined with a Pinterest classroom (of my dreams). An environment to lose yourself and escape into a foreign land, become a detective or discover the adventures of Zeus and Poseidon.
Comfort. Acceptance. Quiet. Peaceful.
 

Benefits to my students

My students would directly benefit with this reading nook, as they would be the ones enjoying the space as they are learning. It would allow students that may need a minute or two to calm down or relax from overstimulation of learning or testing. Students would no longer have to battle over the office chairs in the room or curl up under a desk. They would have their own area that is designed with them in mind, to benefit them the most. I would hope that my students would enjoy and look forward to this time they will have and look back and remember the moment they fell in love with reading. Not the act of reading but the feeling, the adventure, the mystery the excitement—of reading. 

Budget Narrative

Upon researching furniture for the classroom, Amazon had great quality items as well as a large variety to choose from with no shipping costs. The furniture will seat more than half of a class and will allow students different relaxing choices. 

Items