Robin Brown-Orndorff

Brown-Orndorff’s innovative teaching idea, “BEE (Books Encouraging Education) Backpacks,” is a project designed to start a school-wide, take-home literacy backpack program for the school. The program will be thematic, and include content-related collections of fiction and non-fiction books that are engaging and have hands-on activities. Backpacks will be created for each grade level, with each containing high interest books, props, manipulatives, learning activities, science experiment materials, and/or supplies to complete the activities. One goal of the project is to encourage and increase home involvement in children's literacy, while also creating a strong literacy foundation for students. Classroom teachers will be able to help guide students in selecting appropriate backpacks to checkout to take home. The activities included in the backpacks will be rich in oral language, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary. In order to promote interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), many books will be non-fiction.