A literacy closet is a book room stocked with materials.
Whether you teach kindergartners or adults going back to school, literacy closets can help students not only improve their reading skills, but they can also help students feel more comfortable with reading. However, stocking literacy closets with books, workbooks, audio books and other literacy materials can be quite costly. Writing grants can help you avoid paying some of the costs associated with a literacy closet out of pocket. To write a successful grant, you must understand the granting organization well.
Instructions
1. Study the granting organization. Learn as much as you can about the organization, its philanthropic interests and why it awards literacy grants. A grant is essentially a proposal, and it is important to make your proposal appealing by showing your audience why your ideas fit in with its goals.
2. Review the grant application carefully or call for proposals. Make sure you understand what information each component of the proposal is asking you to supply. If you do not understand anything, contact the granting organization for more information. Otherwise, use a calendar to break down the components into a scheduled plan. In other words, budget days for each part of the proposal and proposal review.
3. Develop a design and plan for your literacy closet. Granting organizations want you to be specific. Instead of simply stating that a literacy closet will be beneficial to students, be prepared to detail why and support that claim with anecdotes and statistics. Further, describe exactly how your literacy closet will be organized, the materials housed there and how it will be utilized throughout the day.
4. Tailor your grant to the information discovered in Step 1. Relate your literacy closet and the benefits it gives students to the mission or philanthropic interests of the granting organization. For instance, if you are applying to a technology company that awards grants for technological innovation, you may want to stress that your literacy closet will focus on e-readers.
5. Review and submit. Carefully review your grant application to ensure it is clear and meets the guidelines for submission. Have other teachers knowledgeable about literacy closets review it and give you feedback for the final version.
Tags: literacy closet, granting organization, your literacy, your literacy closet, closet will, literacy closet will, literacy closets
