1. Website: http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/
There is an awesome literacy website for kids created by teachers! This site includes activities based upon Scholastic’s Clifford:The Big Red Dog! . The focus is “Interactive Storybooks: Phonics for Early Readers.” The first section is for interactive reading and there are four stories to choose from. You can choose to read a story either in English or Spanish and then click on the sentence for a read-a-long. In some sentences, there is a fill in the blank where the child has to choose the correct word to complete the sentence. This is a great activity to help develop vocabulary and fluency through practice. And since there is an option to read the story in English and Spanish, it is a great practice for ELL students in helping develop those basic reading skills. In the “Games” section there is a concentration activity where the student is asked to find the words with the same middle sound. For example, “rice has the same middle sound as mice” and so on. Also in the games section, the “Make a Word” activity has the children working with vowels to make the correct word sounds and words. There are also letter and sound matching activities. These help students to identify words having the same beginning letters and words that are similar sounding. All of these games help with basic literacy skills every child needs to know before becoming a strong reader. This site is also a great teacher resource. It has a link to many more Clifford lessons that can be utilized in the classroom and also a teacher guide to help give a better understanding on teaching early literacy skills to young children and ELL learners. This site encourages children to not only learn but to have fun doing it with a loving character they are familiar with. After interacting with the site, children will have the foundation and building blocks for their early literacy skills to spring into action.
By: Alyssa Sacco
2. Website: http://pbskids.org/lions/
One great website that includes great activities to encourage children literary is PBS kids site. It is focused on the hit show Between the Lions: Get Wild About Reading. Any child who is really interested in reading will really enjoy this site. This site has many different sections, and the one that can be best utilized with literacy for children is the section called Stories. Everything is so interactive for children. Once the child scrolls their mouse over the name of the section the name is actually read to them and this is a great feature to have when reading. In the Stories section the student can pick any story that interests them. Sometimes the stories are read by an adult or shown through pictures. I think this would be great for a parent or teacher to show their kids. A teacher could have students log onto the Internet and everyone in the class would have to read the same story. Then the next day the students can have a discussion on the story or do an activity to make sure they understood the story. Like the students could make a little book about what happened first, middle and last in the story. A downfall to the site is that if the students could not access the site from home. The teacher could show it in class to accommodate all students. A great thing that this site also does it after the story is read there is a game that goes along with the book. These are fun activities that go with the previous book just read. Another great thing about the stories section is that the book is written out for the student while it is read out loud. Also, as the site reads each word it highlights the word so the child can keep track and pace with the story. This is a great way to teach kids how to read because this helps them visually see the words along with hearing the way the words sound, which can be great for English Language learners. Being able to see and hear the words can be easier connected in an ELL’s mind. This is a wonderful site and there is even a link at the bottom for teachers and parents to check out. Also, students can look at video clips or play games. Overall this site is a great resource to show children because the child will have so much fun while learning!
By: Stephanie Nguyen
3. Website: http://www.mightybook.com/
Another great website to use to promote literacy in the classroom and outside of the classroom is Mighty Book. This website provides a fun and very welcoming learning environment for children, such that they will not even notice they are learning! Not only does the website promote learning, but it incorporates art and music from famous artists in a creative way. The website is composed of audio and visual story books in which children can read along and listen to, songs in which children can sing along to and learn, jokes, puzzles, games and even lesson plans and worksheets for teachers and parents to print and use. The wonderful thing about the audio and visual story book readings is that as each word is being read, the word changes to red drawing the child’s attention to which words are being read. This helps children keep up and follow along while the book is being read to them. This is a valuable tool for children that may be hard of hearing. This also promotes multi literacy in a way such that English language learners can hear the story while being able to correlate sounds to words. The pictures are great scaffolding devices so that ELLs can, in a sense, predict what is happening in the story, if they do not fully understand. Some ideas as to how you could use Mighty Book in assignments or in the classroom are:
· Have children listen to a story for homework and write a summary.
- · Project a story in the classroom so that the words are big enough for the children to really pay attention to and have students write about and illustrate their favorite part of the story.
- · Have students explore this website during centers and write about what they explored and learned about.
Overall, this website is a great tool for promoting multiliteracy in a fun way for your students and children; however one limitation is that to be able to take advantage of all the website has to offer you have to subscribe to it. That consists of a monthly fee, which may be inconvenient. Regardless, the samples the website posts are great tools.
By Noura Wakim
4. Website: http://storylineonline.net/
Storyline Online is a website that streams videos of celebrities reading children stories. After reading the story, students can do activities related to the book. I think this is a good resource to be used in the classroom. This website provides auditory and visible text for children who are seeing/hearing impaired. I would show the story videos in the classroom and then have the students write a summary of the story. They could also talk about the story to one another, discussing their favorite/least favorite parts. For homework assignments, children can write a journal entry from the perspective of a character in the book. I think this is a great resource for multiliteracy classrooms because it gives students several different opportunities for language development. It provides activities that allow students to speak, read, write, and interact with peers. It is helpful for English Language Learners because it shows the pictures in the book as it is being read. This helps them connect the visual representations to what is being said verbally. Storyline Online illustrates principles of good methodological practices because it provides various forms of learning for the students.
By: D’Anna Siciliano
5. Website:www.starfall.com
Starfall is a great website for children to explore. This is a great way for children to increase their knowledge of literacy. They will be attracted to the bright colors and the entertainment of the different activities and will not even realize this is an educational learning website.
The list of strengths of this website goes on and on. One strength is that there are four main activities the children can interact with. The way Starfall is set up is that children progress through each activity. After the child goes through the first activity and learns everything he/she can, they are capable of moving on to the next activity. The activities have the children start from going through each letter of the alphabet and ending with being able to read short books.
The “ABCs” link takes the children to a page where the child can choose any letter in the alphabet. Here, it sounds out the letter and then uses a word that starts with that letter. The strength of this link is it is a fun exercise for the children because it also uses animation and music to interact with them and makes it an enjoyable experience. The “Learn to Read” link takes the children to a page where they can choose if they want to read books or play games. They have 15 books to choose from and as they read the book and they come across a word they do no know how to read, they can click on the word and it will slowly pronounce it to the child. They also include different videos of the concepts of the alphabet, left to right, and vowels. The “It’s Fun to Read” link takes the children to the page where they can choose from different categories of reading. The can choose from stories about artists, magic, poetry, music, tongue twisters and riddles. Here they can practice reading and the words can be read to them by clicking on the words as they go along.
You can use this resource in the classroom by having the teacher use it at the computer center. When the children have “free time”, they can choose to go over to the computer center and visit this website and explore literacy by themselves. The teacher could also have the class sit around the computer and she/he can guide the students through the website and do it together as a class. For homework assignments, this website is a great opportunity for kids to practice reading outside of school. You could assign the students a couple of letters a night to go through and then in class the next day do different exercises with words that start with those letters. You could also assign the students to read a certain book on that website and then do an activity on that book the next day in class.
A limitation for assigning homework to the website is that the teacher does need to take into consideration that not all of the students will have access to a computer at home. Therefore, the teacher should have an estimate about whether being able to assign this type of homework assignment is reasonable or not. The teacher might encourage those students without access to a computer to visit a public library or stay after school in an after school program and do the homework at that time. I don’t think there are that many limitations to this resource because this website allows the child to sound out each letter as they read the word and gives them multiple opportunities to practice.
By: Amy Yarbrough
All of these sites are definitely a great tool to share with friends and families that will help children become successful in literacy! Please check out these sites and use for future reference. Enjoy!
Starfall is a great website and you did a good job describing how beneficial it is to children starting to learn how to read. I like how it starts from the beginning so children can work themselves up the literacy ladder. Having is available for children in the classroom are great especially for low socioeconomic schools where children might not have internet access.
ReplyDeleteI believe any website that has people reading to them and highlighting the words so the child can follow along is beneficial for recognizing words and sounds together.
Also, these website allow students to choose their own books to listen to or read which sparks interest to children and makes them want to read and keep reading and using the websites for themselves.