SOLSC18 26/31: It’s Summertime and the Reading is Easy: My Project to Get Books Into Students’ Hands

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for holding space for us to sharing our writing
every day in March.

This is the state of my office this year.  Boxes and boxes of books.  I am retiring.  Why do I have all these books?

The library has held a used book fair in June the past three years.  All the money raised comes back to the library and we have gotten to pick out books from the donations to add to the library as needed. (We always need books).

At the end of the 2016-2017 school year, I set a goal for myself:

• To collect 1500 books so that my students would be able to select a minimum of three books at the end of 2017-2018 school year.  A sort of goodbye gift to my school.

Students need access to books.  By reading throughout the summer, they keep those reading skills intact and don’t suffer from a backslide.

I’ve read that students need between 5-15 books per summer.  Not all my students have access to the public library (which is how I spent my summers as a child).

I’ve been getting donations, purchasing through the library sales (like every time I go to my local library there are books for sale), Goodwill, the $5 sales at Kohls, etc to gather books. Someone who was moving donated her children’s books)  They are all grown.

I have about 800 books, I think.  The Washington Reading Corp staff will be going through the boxes and sorting.  New books versus used books, chapter books versus picture books to start.  My hope is that each student will get one new book and two used.

I’m hoping to reach my goal.  I discovered that Scholastic is running a sale (50 books for $50.00) and hope to add to the numbers.

Fingers crossed that I reach my goal.

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