I have a culturally and econimically diverse group of third-grade students. I am the only third-grade classroom on my campus that is self-contained. Their educational needs are equally diverse. Some of my students came to me reading on a first-grade level, and are unable to read assignments in any subject area. I am working closely with my colleagues on identifying possible causes for their reading delays, but it is my number one goal to teach them the reading skills they lack.
Position:
3rd Grade Teacher
Needs:
My low readers need more access to reading materials on their level that will both hold their interest and help them to quickly advance their phonics and word recognition skills. I have a document camera, projector, and a decent teacher computer. I have two student computers in my classroom, but they are not very dependable and take a good part of the morning to boot up. Ideally, I would like to have 4-5 dependable student computers in my classroom in order to assign computer-based skill building instruction to small groups of students. My students would also benefit from having an interactive whiteboard in the classroom. We have one on our grade level to share among seven teachers, but it is very difficult to coordinate sometimes.