The Blossom first grade team has been working on establishing a book room with books appropriate for first grade students. With the money from the Coos Bay School Foundation grant we were able to purchase 34 sets of informational books to enhance our book room.

Oregon has adopted The Common Core State Standards; the emphasis on reading informational texts in the primary grades is greater than ever before.  The expectation is that students will read 50% informational texts and 50% literature texts at the first grade level with grade appropriate fluency and accuracy.

Our book room and our textbooks do not have a great abundance of informational text.  Being able to add more nonfiction books to our book room will allow us to address the discrepancy between the 50% fiction to 50% nonfiction ratio that is expected in order to teach with the new standards. Our current curriculum textbook inventory is approximately 20% nonfiction and 80% fiction.

The book sets are to be used during our reading group time where instruction is differentiated based on student reading ability.  Students will practice reading aloud as well as silently, discuss main ideas, and retell information in the books.  They will work on knowing how to use various text features (headings, table of contents, glossaries, and index).

Our heartfelt thank you to the Coos Bay Scholarship Foundation for all your support that has been given to the first grade team at Blossom Gulch Elementary School.  We appreciate all that you do to help our students become successful readers.