WITS ROCHELLE LEE TEACHER AWARD

WITS ROCHELLE LEE TEACHER AWARD

The WITS Rochelle Lee Teacher Award (RLTA) is an award-based grant for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) pre-kindergarten to eighth grade teachers to help them add brand new books to their classroom libraries. CPS teachers apply for the grant and select books to enhance their libraries and receive books that their students may borrow.

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Why classroom libraries are important

Educators agree that schools play an important role in expanding access to books at home, but many teachers have fewer than 150 books in their classroom libraries to serve all their students throughout the year—with 31% of teachers having fewer than fifty books.

According to the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development - ASCD, Children who have robust classroom libraries are more likely to be frequent readers.

Surrounding students with books in the classroom helps them develop a sense of themselves as readers. Classroom libraries allow students to value their decision-making ability, giving them confidence and a feeling of ownership.

RLTA RESOURCES: WITS LIBRARY MATERIALS

Professional texts available to use in the WITS library (select "professional texts" from drop-down menu). This resource is for RLTA awardees only.
Booksource’s Classroom Organizer is a free, online tool to catalog your classroom library books, create class check-out rosters, manage usage reports, and more. This resource is available for all teachers.

RLTA RESOURCES: WITS Lending library

The WITS Lending Library contains more than 350 sets of children and young adult books. Titles are available in whole class sets and smaller group sets. Current and former WITS educators may borrow books from our lending library. This resource is for RLTA awardees only.
View the Rochelle Lee Lending Library catalog and availability online via LibraryThing.
WITS Lending Library/LibraryThing reference guide.
Contact Daphne Robinson in advance to borrow books from the lending library for your students. This will ensure that the desired books are available, and that a specific time can be scheduled to pick up the books.

GET INVOLVED

Apply for a Rochelle Lee Teacher Award
Support this program with a donation.

program facilitators

Daphne Robinson

Daphne Robinson

Teacher Program Director

daphner@witschicago.org
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Kristen Strobbe

Chief Program Officer

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