- Description:
Our goal is for every student at Sunshine to be able to visit and purchase a book of their choosing at our annual Scholastic Book Fair, put on October 21st-October 25th.
- Need Represented: Sunshine has a very diverse population of learners with high needs. Often times many of our community members live paycheck to paycheck and can not afford luxury or nonessential items. Therefore, many of our students often never get the opportunity to experience the joy, excitement, and memories of getting to visit, browse, select and, purchase a book for themselves at our book fair.
There has been many studies that have shown a direct-positive correlation between when students are able to choose books they want to read and an increase in their interest, time-spent, skills development, and impact of becoming life-long readers.
This project and it's funds directly aim to help increase those direct-positive correlations within our most at-risk student populations at Sunshine while also creating an atmosphere of inclusivity for all students being able to experience and purchase a book at our annual book fair. - Academic Impact: This project has 2 dynamic impacts for the students of Sunshine Elementary:
1. Promotion of Literacy-
Every student will be given the opportunity to self-select at book they will get to keep. The goal is that by being able to chose a book for themselves, every student impacted will increase their interest, desire, and likelihood to read beyond the classroom. These increases will help in the short-term, increasing literacy skills and scores throughout our school, but also in the long-term, helping to develop positive reading habits that create life long readers and ultimately having a significant influence on their educational careers and beyond.
2. Closing the Opportunity Gap-
As stated previously, many of our students will not have the opportunity to privately purchase a book from our book fair due to financial strains many of our community members face. As a Title I school a large majority of our population that is on a free or reduced lunch plan, along with free breakfast. These students will often never get the opportunity to experience the excitement and joy a child gets when they get to visit their school's book fair.
I would hazard a guess, that many reading this project, can connect their own elementary experience with one of the above mentioned students. Where you one that got to go and spend money at your books fair as a child? Do you remember what that excitement and happiness felt like? Or where you on the other end of the spectrum? Did you never get that opportunity and in some ways felt left out or maybe a little envious of others?
By donating to this project you are helping to ensure that every student at Sunshine is able to get the "book fair" experience, closing that opportunity gap, and helping to instill and promote literacy and a love of reading for all. - Student Population: Sunshine Elementary has 18 classrooms with an average class size of 17-24 students.
We fluctuate overall numbers on a daily basis, but tend to range between 330-360 students on average.
Our goal is to raise enough funds to potentially provide 300 of those students with a voucher allowing them to purchase a book of their choosing from our annual book fair, if they are financially unable to do so themselves.
Sunshine is one of 17 Title I schools within the SPS district.
Last year we had a free and reduced lunch rate of 76%, or roughly 250-275 students who qualified for the program.
That number or percentage is vital when we think about the link between poverty and literacy:
Statistically, it has been shown that lower income families often have fewer books in their home, overall, averaging just 4 books per home. With up to 61% of low-income families having no books at all in their home.
Whereas, a 20 year study completed at at the University of Nevada, Reno found that a child with just 20 books in their home can help them develop essential literacy skills to help them reach higher level of academic success and job attainment in the future.
With such a high percentage of our student population falling into that low-income category, it is our goal, with the help of this Pick-A-Project, to help build those home libraries for those community members while closing the opportunity gap, and instilling a love a reading.
