Feature #14: Teach Your Monster to Read

 

            Reading is a skill that is imperative to success as we all know. Students are pressured and reminded daily at school of how important it is and I’m sure at times have felt defeated when or if they struggle to make sense of the all the sounds and graphemes that are introduced to them. The pressure to be a good reader can at times make reading not fun or enjoyable and why would a kid want to do something that is not a good time?

The Teach Your Monster to Read site - https://www.teachyourmonster.org/ helps remove that pressure as they foster independence within the program. Teachers or parents start by creating a group of students and printing or downloading their personal passwords to log in. When students log in, they immediately are greeted by a friendly automated voice that walks them through personalizing their monster and then on to their first adventure. The graphics are bright and whimsical, and the voice-over has a slight British accent. The instructions are clear however it does encourage the user to click around and learn to navigate through trial and error. The instructions given are a bit redundant and the four activities initially introduced become monotonous for a reader, but a non-reader may find comfort and success in knowing exactly what to do as they progress through the levels. Students are given in-game incentives for completing tasks. Feedback is immediate and if a mistake is made the rigor is decreased to ensure success. Students are introduced to letter names and sounds initially and then progress into diphthongs and digraphs. This portion of the site is intended for non-readers or beginning readers.

For students that can read and are learning to read for enjoyment, they can explore Teach Your Monster Reading for Fun. In this game module, students via their monster venture into a Monster city where they must read books and perform tasks to gain incentives and save the city. The books on this website are know books that can be purchased through Usborne Publishing. This game mode gives students more freedom to explore and includes scaffolded rigor. Students can choose to read the adventure prompts for themselves or click on the conversation bubbles to have it read for them. 

                The Teach Your Monster to Read site was developed by the Usborne Foundation which is a charity set up by the founder of Usborne Publishing to encourage and support early literacy. The site boasts that the content is created by academic experts and is trusted by teachers.  This site has won many awards and recognitions to support literacy.

*Contribution by Heidi Cameron

Feature #13: Reading Eggs

Reading Eggs (https://readingeggs.com) is an online reading websites that helps children learn how to read. This website makes reading interesting and fun through the sites online games and activities. Through expert educators with over 30 years of experience in education the website Reading Eggs was created. This multi-award winning early learning resources helps support your child’s learning how to read journey with the websites online reading games and activities that are easy to follow, self-paced and fun and engaging for young children. This website gives younger child the opportunity to start getting prepared for the same structured learning that they will need to succeed when they start school.

Through this website children are taught lessons using colorful animations, fun characters, songs, and rewards to keep the students interested. This reading website is completely interactive which will keep the students on task and on the right track. Reading Eggs gives parents access to detailed progress reports as well as hundreds of downloadable activity worksheets that can help the child with the lessons in the program. Read Eggs has developed an effective learn to read process which has students engaged and interested. First students are to complete animated online lessons where they learn essential reading and phonics skills. Then students are given opportunities to read online books of words that they have already studied in the program. During this process students earn golden eggs as rewards for the progress they have made in the program. With these eggs children can buy reward games and items for their avatar or house in the program. After ten lessons, children are to complete a quiz which provides parents and the program an idea of what the child is learning.

Overall, Reading Eggs is an amazing website to help build on early literacy skills. I believe that this website gives parents the opportunity to help child get prepared for literacy skills that will learned when they start school. This website can also be a great resource for students in my classroom who are struggling in reading.

*Contribution by Erika Lorenzo.