Early Literacy Learning Center

Currently I teach in a Pre K- 5 elementray building. Our current enrollment is approximately 230 students. Of that, more than half of our children live in poverty. We know that children that live in poverty are exposed to far fewer literacy opportunities and as a result, come to us academially, further behind their peers. In fact, when screening our incoming kindergartners we were able to find out that 1 and 20 children did not know their alphabet. In comparison, another school close by shared that their results were only 1 in 3. This is a HUGE gap and can be attributed to that poverty connection.
As a result, our school has come up with an early literacy intervention program that all students K-3 are involved with. They received targeted reading instruction from specialists 4 days a week. The fifth day we use to assess where our children are and how we can continue to best serve their needs.
I am asking for a SMART table because this is an interactive tool that could be very powerful for our children. They would be able to learn everything from word sorts, letter sorts, fluency activities to comprehension skills while actively participating in their learning. This is the key...ACTIVE PARTICIPATION.
This one piece of equipment would be used by approximately 160 students daily. I strongly feel this would be an opportunity for our children to "keep up" and compete in this digital age.