Pebble Go and Pebble Go Next

By Capstone

Pebble Go (https://pebblego.com/) and Pebble Go Next (https://pebblegonext.com/) by Capstones is a curricular content hub. Pebble Go is designed for K-3 students and Pebble Go Next is designed for 3rd-5th grade students. Capstone is a family owned company to support the needs of reading in grades Pre-K to high school students. There are high quality and high-interest fiction and non-fictional materials. The content hub includes informational articles, ready-made activities, and literacy support for students of all abilities. It allows and fosters independent learning in core areas.

You can also sign up for a free trial to explore what Pebble Go and Pebble Go Next has to offer. Pebble Go Next's big idea is research. Its databases help students learn key concepts in Social Studies, Biographies, Science, States and American Indians. The articles are all supported by read-aloud audio and are connected to the curriculum. Pebble Go in particular assists early readers, meets student needs, and supports educators.

Pebble Go and Pebble Go Next offers a lot of user friendly features. Students just click on what they would like to read about or learn. Each category has a huge library of choices.

Among the features, is simple navigation and information is easy to find. The read aloud articles have real voice actors to help model correct pronunciation and fluency. It also provides text highlighting for readers of all abilities to follow along. 

*Contribution by Dona Miles

International Children’s Digital Library Foundation

 

The International Children’s Digital Library Foundation (ICDL) website - http://www.childrenslibrary.org was created to support the world’s children in becoming effective members of their local and global community while respecting the diverse cultures, languages, and ideas throughout our world.  ICDL strives to make the best children's literature available online, free of charge.  Another thing to note about this site is that it is a government-funded website so the content on the site has been reviewed and filtered. 

Even though the primary audiences for the ICDL are children from three to thirteen years old, parents, children caregivers, and educators, as well as academic professionals working in the field of children’s literature, are also targeted, since these people also impact the literacy of a child.  This website is great for students, parents, and educators, because it has a large collection of interactive books and they're all free.  It is valuable, especially considering its goals of helping a diverse audience accept all cultures.

*Contribution by G. Henry

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

ABC's of Family Literacy

by Dr. Matilda Naputi Rivera

A lways take the time to read to your child at home.

B elieve in your child’s ability to achieve literacy success.

C reate a print-rich environment.

D iscover the importance of literacy together.

E ncourage your child to read daily.

F ocus on a positive reading experience.

G rab your favorite book and read!

H andle reading and writing with care.

I nspire your child to read with meaning.

J oin family literacy events.

K eep up the great work!

L isten to your child read.

M ake reading a ritual at home.

N ever give up!

O pen your mind to the wonderful world of reading!

P repare your child for literacy success.

Q uality time is essential. Make time for it.

R ead and write with enjoyment.

S et a good role model.

T alk about the books you are reading.

U se prior experience and knowledge to enrich your child’s reading.

V isit the library or bookstore and select an age-appropriate book to enjoy reading.

W ear a SMILE!

X out and conquer all obstacles.

Y ou can make a difference!

Z oom in on literacy strategies to enhance reading.

Season’s Greetings!

May the spirit of Christmas bring you much love, joy, peace, and happiness to last through the coming year 2021 and beyond!

Rewordify

Rewordify.com, http://rewordify.com/, a powerful and free literacy website is dedicated to improving reading, learning, and teaching aimed at improved learner’s comprehension level.  This app is free, fast, and safe for all users.  Both students and parents can become members and have access for a better and monitored learning.  Created by Neil M. Goldman, this site’s aim is to help more people understand materials read to enhance their reading skills. After ten years of teaching experience, Mr. Goldman realized the need to further build on reading skills and decided to develop an app for struggling readers who need to work very hard to understand materials read. He further stressed that despite the fact that dictionaries are already in place the help is minimal. As a result, he created this site to allow all learners the opportunity to attain their maximum capability. This application eliminates the difficulty to understand words and replaces them with simplified words while keeping as much of the original meaning as possible. Being a user-friendly site, it gently introduces learners to new words, teaches meaning, and empowers them to make necessary changes as they see fit for enhanced learning. 

The goal of Rewordify.com is to build on its learners reading comprehension and vocabulary development by making the language easier to understand. It also allows the ability of rewording sentences or paragraphs in simplified forms. This app is an important part of reading instructions and vocabulary instructions for ESL students, people with reading disabilities, people with a learning disability, or anyone who wants to improve reading skill.  Benefits of this app includes saving time when reading hard texts, improves comprehension and self-confidence, improves vocabulary and word retention, reduces frustration and improves comprehension just to name a few.  This site has received several positive comments from various educators which includes “pretty remarkable”, “one of the most innovative websites”, “this is amazing”, “a fantastic web app”, “excellent tool to enhance comprehension”, “makes your life easier” etc.

            With the use of rewordify.com, materials will become simplified to boost understanding.  When understanding is in place for sure learning will become productive.  As educators, we ought to learn more about this app and utilize it in the learning environment especially that it’s free of charge.  Since we are ESL learners, this tool matches our capability and is more appropriate for our use to maximize learning.

*Contribution by Y. Kanichy

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.

    After exploring the website, I found some of the literacy facts to be very interesting. 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