Feature #16: Seussville

Seussville (www.seussville.com) is a website dedicated to sharing the works of Dr. Seuss and guiding parents/educators to incorporate his books into lesson plans throughout the year. Based on the age groups selection, the resources found on this website cater to children of ages baby to twelve; however, there, you will also find books suited for young adults. Throughout the website, you will find games, activities, and printables to use at home and in your classroom.

While the website offers a range of resources for all content, the focus of Seussville is to engage children in reading Dr. Seuss’s books. When navigating the website, you will see tabs leading to the books and their famous characters. Through this experience, children can immerse themselves into the world of Dr. Seuss’s. While the website does not offer free access to the book themselves, the digital resources such as activities and printables are. You can access these resources by clicking on the tabs, Parents, and Educators at the top of the website. There, you will find printable literacy activities for writing and word skills.  In the Parents section, you will find guides that you can use to enhance the learning experience with your children or younger relatives, such as using rhymes, wordplay, and nonsense words.

While the majority of the resources in Seussville do not provide articles or resources that directly teach literacy, it sets the environment for learning for children. The fun activities will captivate the attention of the young learners and allow them to be immersed in the learning process. Children's experiences with the activities on this website can help create the mindset that learning literacy is fun.

*Contribution by Elvin De Leon

Feature #15: StoryJumper

StoryJumper, which can be accessed at https://www.storyjumper.com, is a website that helps bring out the inner author in anyone. It is a free online book creator and publisher that offers clever tools for writing and illustrating stories. Parents and teachers will find it useful for sharing stories and presenting information, while students will find an encouraging means for reading and writing themselves.

Conveniently for 4th and 5th grade teachers, StoryJumper provides a sample lesson plan supported by common core standards with downloadable resources to go along. However, StoryJumper is for everyone! The interface, tools, and endless ideas make it easy to be utilized by parents, teachers, students of all grade levels, and in every school subject. Students can write narratives or reflection journals, demonstrate their understanding of a skill by teaching it through pages, introduce themselves with an all about me style, co-author by collaborating with classmates, and more! For younger kids, safety may be of concern, but all of this can be done with the highest level of information and identity protection as assured by StoryJumper.

When creating a book, users can select a template or simply start from scratch. Afterwards, they will be taken to the editor where they can explore and create away. In the editor, there are options to add text, upload photos, and insert audio recordings. StoryJumper also offers a ready set of images, props, and scenes that can be filtered through. The editor uses a drag-and-drop style with further editing options that makes it so user friendly, but for those who are interested, StoryJumper offers a how-to video to help get started. In the end, completed books can be professionally published and ordered. Although creating a book requires computer access, users are free to read StoryJumper books on any device.

All in all, StoryJumper is a great website for promoting reading and writing that is safe for children. Students can read ready-made books or get creative with one of their own through an easy and intuitive experience. All that is needed is an idea to get started.

*Contribution by Kristine Madrazo

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.

Feature #12: Flocabulary

Flocabulary www.flocabulary.com is a very useful tool and platform with numerous short videos that can help teachers teach current events and historical topics. With each video, it has remarkable graphics along with upbeat songs that allows teaching more fun. To sign up, you can easily go to the website and create a username by entering your email address.  Using the platform, Flocabulary, you can easily find videos that match lessons that can be exciting and fun for the children. The children are able to watch videos after learning about a certain topic and completing interactive lyrics worksheets. Using Flocabulary at the end of units also helps students remember better the topic they covered.

Flocabulary is very highly engaging for student learning. It has engaging lessons and videos that engage learning through hip hop that covers the lesson. It has vocabulary cards that build word knowledge, vocabulary games that test word knowledge through numerous interactive exposures, read and respond, practice reading passages and answer dependent questions, a quiz that assess lesson comprehension by auto-graded quiz, and lyric lab that students can demonstrate their mastery by rhyme writing. Flocabulary helps children build vocabulary, master standards, and develop 21st-century skills. 

*Contribution by R.Kohler

Feature #11: Starfall

            Starfall (https://www.starfall.com/h/) is a website dedicated to early learners from pre-kindergarten to third grade. The website features interactive games, songs, and resources that support literacy skills. The site is easy to navigate through and it appeals to the target audience. The activities are engaging and easy to understand. Students can make simple choices and will not get punished for getting something wrong. There is a mixture of text, audio, and videos with each activity.

            There are three main features that focus on reading skills. The Learn to Read section teaches common sounds through interactive games, books, and videos. The I’m Reading section contains short books, comics, and plays that students can read. The It’s Fun to Read section allows students to learn by reading in context. Students can move forward through the sections however they like. As they move on to the other sections, their reading skills will improve and develop. Although most of the content is geared towards elementary students, there are some activities that go over more advanced concepts like grammar. Starfall offers clear and useful early literacy lessons.

            The Parent-Teacher Center contains a lot of resources that can be downloaded or printed. The printables are customizable and focus on letter recognition, letter formation, high-frequency words, and blending. Along with the printables, Starfall also provides detailed lists of the CCSS alignments, children songs and nursery rhymes that can be downloaded at no cost, and a curriculum guide for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. One of the unique features of Starfall is the accessibility section that provides information on how to use the website to support students with special needs. With the Parent-Teacher Center, a strong and clear plan, and a combination of work on and off the website, Starfall can be an excellent tool for learning to read.

*Contribution by J. De Leon

Feature #10: The Reading Tub

The Reading Tub

    The Reading Tub (http://thereadingtub.com/learning_to_read.php collects and distributes books to at-risk readers, whether it is a child with no books at home or a teacher who is building a classroom library for struggling readers. The Reading Tub was once a site that was dedicated to giving book reviews until recently, it became a non-profit organization dedicated to getting books out to at-risk readers. This organization is built on the belief that individuals become successful readers when they have access to reading materials at home. The goal of the Reading Tub is to provide a one stop place for helping kids fulfill their full literacy potential. Donations are what fund the works of The Reading Tub and 100% of the funds received goes to providing literacy information and shipping books. Individuals interested are encouraged to become a literacy volunteer for this non-profit organization or to simply be a registered reader.

The Reading Tub provides literacy resources for families and educators. Prior to exploring the tabs of the website, parents are encouraged to read an article about Guided Reading at Home (http://thereadingtub.com/pdfs/our_guided_reading_set.pdf ) which offers various ways that parents can help their children at home using techniques that teachers are using in the classroom. In addition, a list of reading activities is provided that can be used to get children excited about reading. It is highly encouraged that parents read WITH their child especially at a young age. It is also emphasized that Parents show by example the importance of reading by letting their children see them read on a daily basis. Make reading a daily experience, incorporate reading into an activity your kid loves, create a family reading night, planning a family adventure to the library are a just a few of the activities along with descriptions that are listed on the Reading Tub. 

When it comes to literacy, specifically reading, the reality is that some kids love to read, while other kids hate and dread it. What is helpful and nice about the Reading Tub website is that they explain why some children don’t like to read with possible factors whether it is an environmental or medical factor. For example, an environmental factor would be the idea of modeling behaviors of what they see at home when it comes to literacy. If the adults at home do not read, the children will not prefer to read as well. A medical factor would include dyslexia, a learning disability. Other factors include being a late bloomer or having anxiety. Links are provided for further reading on these contributing factors.

The Reading Tub listed a few Literacy facts that prove the importance of reading as a skill and the impact that reading has in influencing success later in life. A literacy fact I thought was interesting is that “The average kindergarten student has seen more than 5,000 hours of television, having spent more time in front of the T.V. than it takes to earn a bachelor’s degree” or that “80% of college faculty members report that entering freshman cannot read well enough to do college work.” Although some of the facts are unfortunately true, it goes to show that reading is the key and without this skill, success is difficult at the post-secondary level and as an adult. Like every other literacy website, links with descriptions of articles and more resources are provided for further reading along with a periodic newsletter “The Wash Rag”, tailored towards your reader’s age.

In addition to the provided resources, book reviews are still included in the Reading Tub. Book reviews are categorized by age group and then in alphabetical order. After clicking on a book title, a comprehensive review is given to include the link to purchase the book, a summary, reading level, pros, cons, related books, recommended age, reading and interest level, to name a few.

In conclusion, The Reading Tub provides insightful perspectives and interesting resources that explain the importance of reading altogether. The Reading Tub advocates for early literacy and getting parents involved by encouraging them to read in the home environment by reading together or by modeling reading.  I would recommend this website for both educators and parents with young readers. The Reading Tub was created for a good cause and their belief in bringing literacy home for families and their philosophical view that kids need to read to succeed in life is something I could agree and advocate with.

*Contribution by L. Orlando