Requested by Beth Ailinger – Reading Specialist | Armstrong Elementary School  | Vetted by WETF and WPS

“Curl up with an e-Book” – Help All Grades at Armstrong Elementary School Support Struggling Readers with the Opportunity to Use E-Books at Home.

Help us to further enhance our already wonderful educational environment for all students at Armstrong Elementary. WETF (in conjunction with the Westborough Public Schools) allows us the unique opportunity to request funds for approved projects to extend beyond the budget.  One of the major goals of WETF and WPS is to celebrate and nurture teachers that strive to better their students and selves using the power of technology that is properly implemented into the education environment.  By “crowd-sourcing” these requests to a small group we can divide the cost such that each individual’s donation is small and the results directly impact the donors themselves. We ask that you consider making a donation.

“Curl up with an e-Book”  is a project whose purpose is to enhance, strengthen and reinforce literacy skills at home for Reading Intervention students through the use of e-readers . The  plan will be to purchase Kindle Fire Kids edition tablet/e-readers that children will bring home. These e-readers for take home by Reading Intervention students will  provide richer reading support opportunities for many Armstrong students to read at home.  The plan is to purchase e-readers that I would  loan out to my students. We will have each Kindle set up with books as well as some literacy skills practice activities for the children to use at home to strengthen and support literacy development. The at home experience of e-reading  will be in addition to the explicit teaching that happens at school. The devices will be set up at school thru the Reading Department. By offering these devices on a carefully orchestrated “borrowing” schedule we will see student engagement and success at school improve.

Secondly, and an equally important benefit for our developing readers is e-readers will provide the ability for children and their families to listen to books as well. All struggling readers need practice in reading fluently and by hearing native English speakers read to them, children have more language experience when they are not at school. The audiobooks will provide benefits to our students to enjoy the experience of hearing books read fluently. For our English Learners listening to language this is a key component in their English language development which is often not available at home. Listening to books in english gives students the correct pronunciation of words, tone of voice, expression and appropriate rate of speaking, the components of fluency that can be difficult for independent practice at home. All young readers can benefit from the auditory experience.

Part of the campaign dollars will be spent for subscription services to Reading Rainbow, Razikids and National Geographic online resources.

Our campaign will offer Reading intervention students the opportunity to borrow Kindle Fire e-readers for reading at home. The model of Reading intervention at Armstrong already includes the opportunity for children to take home leveled texts for independent reading practice at home. By adding e-readers, our plan will be to integrate technology into the reading at home component to support our goal of 21st Century Learning.  The power of sending an e-reader home with pre loaded books to choose from will further support children’s reading development. The e-readers will have the added value of having wonderful rich interesting higher level books that can read aloud while children follow along. An e-reader also has tremendous value to English Language Learners because of the opportunity to listen to language. Listening will support vocabulary development to all of those who utilize the e-reader function of reading aloud to the children.

Help us make this happen for the all students in need at Armstrong Elementary School.

Kindle Fire 7″ Kids Edition w Kid Proof Case $100 each x 8 = $800.00

Raz-kids subscription Raz-Kids.com 1 year $109.95

Reading A-Z subscription Reading A-Z 1 year $109.95

Amazon Gift Card to allow for varied purchasing of Kindle Fire e Books for the 8 devices. $400.00

Total $ 1,420.00

By clicking on the “Donate” button below you are also agreeing to our Donation Acceptance Policy and Privacy Policy. Thank you for helping WETF fund important technology initiatives for the Westborough Public Schools through your donation.