Using the web to facilitate reading

Teaching your kids to read is not easy but it's even more difficult when other factors come in the way. For many it may be because their native language isn't English and they can't read to their kids. Some parent, who are born and raised here in America , have difficulty reading themselves, so reading to their kids is not an option. Other families may have difficulty getting to their nearest library--which may not be near at all. Or if it is near, family members may find it difficult to get home after work to bring their kids to the library and help kids pick out good books. Or...well, I think you get my point which are mainly that learning to read is a process that should begin at home before school but if it starts at school should extend to home. And secondly, families face challenges in getting their kids to learn to read. I can't bring about solutions for all the challenges families face but I've found two wonderfully helpful websites that can help with some of the issues I mentioned.

When I look at websites the first questions I ask are: Will this benefit students receiving special education services? Is the material grade level and content-appropriate for my demographic? Will I have to teach a mini-lesson teaching the kids how to access and use the site? Is the site visual, auditory? Is the site best suited to incorporate into a larger lesson plan? As an extension activity? Free time? Etc. Now choosing a reading website (site that allows children to read online books or follow along a recorded reading) is even trickier. In my opinion, the ideal site for children with learning disabilities should be fun, visual, auditory, include text prompts, be interactive and put children in the driver's--umm, reader's seat. What I mean is:

1. Fun--kids should like the site and want to go back.


2. Visual--the books should be more than bland text on a white backdrop. It should include great images that allow children to bounce back and forth from the reading to the images; connecting one to the other and perhaps even coming up with their own ideas in their head.


3. Auditory--Children with learning disabilities, as well as younger children and children with reading difficulties, have immense difficulty with decoding and reading. Sometimes when they read it's more decoding than comprehension. In other words their focusing their concentration on trying to pronounce the word and less emphasis on what's going on in the story. When we read to kids a number of things are happening: they're hearing how our vocal intonations and pace changes as the story progresses and we switch from one character to the next. Also, they start to put together how certain words are pronounced and differentiating text patterns, eg. Cat, Pat and Sat sound alike and they all end in -AT.


4. Text Prompts--Children should be able to follow along with reading. Sometimes that isn't the case. If the audio is too fast and isn't in sync with the words and images the children are looking at, the process becomes less reading and more listening. I would like to see a site that brings attention to the word being read as it is said in the recording. This way kids can see and hear the story. They can explore how words sound and notice how certain patterns make distinct sounds (kids also need an explicit teaching approach to learning the letter-sound relationships, though, some kids more than others).


5. Interactive--A great site will allows children to interact with the story. Click on a word to hear it; go back and forth in the story easily as new questions and answers emerge.


6. Driver's-umm, Reader's Seat--This kind of ties in with being Interactive but is slightly different. I DO NOT like sites that after you click on the audio story it goes, and goes, and goes--until the end of the story. Children should always be in control when they read. They should have time to let the story sink in, to make connections, to pose questions. Good sites put children in control.

Have I found a website that has all these qualities? No, well, not yet. I'll keep searching for sites that do meet all the criteria. But I have found two great sites.

The first one is Childrens Book Online by Rosetta Inc. (http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/library-audio.htm). I've only posted a link to the audio book section but there are many other books but with story images and texts only. The audio book section is great for children with learning disabilities as it includes great images and absolutely fantastic recordings that immerse kids in the middle of the story. It also puts kids in control of what they're reading. They can move forward and backward page-by-page and click on the accompanying audio associated with the story (located near the bottom of the story page). The site doesn't have text prompts that move from one word to another but if parents can follow along the story they should use a pencil to do.

The other thing I like about the site is they've indexed the site by reading level, including: Pre-reader, or very early reader, Early, Intermediate, Advanced, Adult and Multiple Languages. The site also contains a 'Library Super-Index' that categorizes all the stories in alphabetic order. The good thing about this option is that it also lists the books by chapter. So if you're kid read up to chapter 5 in Alice in Wonderland, you can just jump to the Super Index, go to Alice in Wonderland, and click on chapter 5--instead of flipping through the story page by page.

Most of the stories include a Download option, so you could download the entire story to your desktop. There's also a 'Download Instructions' link that gives a great step by step instructions to downloading the zip file and extracting it. It also includes links for free zip and extract software if you do not have them. I tried downloading Alice in Wonderland by clicking on the Download button but it didn't seem to work but if it were to work, I assume it would download the book as JPGs (an image file). The only pain with that would be if you're downloading a 150-page book, you might download 150 images (or 75 if each image is a two-page spread). But that issue could be overcome by sorting those images in a folder and naming that folder accordingly. So you would have all the Alice in Wonderland images in the Alice in Wonderland folder. The next thing you can do is download a free viewer, like Google Picasa, that can upload all those pics and show them in a slideshow.

One of the other great features is that some of the stories are supported in other languages like Italian and Portugese. So it could be modified for ELLs (English Language Learners). They can read, listen (parents or other should read it to them as the site does not include audio in other languages) and understand it in their first language. They can then read and listen to it English.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Sneak Peek:

Part Two-http://www.childrenslibrary.org/