Game Goo is an interesting website that helps kids practice recognizing letters, forming sentences, spelling, and other many other things through games. The website consists of several small games that cover many sorts of activities such as identifying antonyms, identifying synonyms, and letter-sound correspondences. They are ranked from beginner to advanced, and each game presents colorful characters and backgrounds, interesting drawing styles, music, voices and fun extras. They are definitely fun games that do help practice learning the basics of language while having fun. I have tried a few games myself and found them to be enjoyable as well as educational. The games are intended mostly for young kids who are starting to learn the English language, but it may be enjoyable for other audiences, as I myself did. These games are designed more to be enjoyed outside of the classroom during free time or at home on the computer. For those who want to learn but still have fun during the process, these games at Game Goo are definitely worth looking into.
By Samuel Martinez
One website and source that I feel many people overlook to help students with their literacy acquisition are local library websites. Austin Public Library has a great website and programs for students of all ages to promote literacy acquisition. They offer a plethora of sources for parents and adults to use. The divide it into three different programs: Children's Programming, Teen Programming and Outreach programming. Each program focuses mainly on reading and attracting students to reading. For the children's programming, they have various activities where students and caregivers can get involved with reading stories. I've gone and sat in on these read-along type activities and seen how much fun children have. It also is great because it allows adults/parents/caregivers to get actively involved with students and reading. This would provide students with a more meaningful way of reading. The experience they share with their caregiver will give them more motivation towards reading and developing their skills. The children sat attentively and listened to the person reading to them. Then afterwards they would even do certain activities to help with spelling, learning word sounds, and things like that. It was almost like an extra literacy learning for students out side of school. On top of allowing students a fun experience, they will be receiving extra attention to literacy outside of the classroom environment. The people who run the programs are very great with helping students learn and giving parents pointers, tips, and resources to help their students with literacy acquisition
The Austin Public Library website also has links to websites to help students with learning. Parents and educators can easily access these materials to use for their children. One source I found very interesting is called “Tumble Book Library.” This program provides story books, puzzles/games, audio books, and featured books that are recommended for children. I feel that with the integration of technology to our everyday lives, a computer-oriented reading program would be received greatly by students. The library itself, provides students with animated, talking picture books. It's a resource available for teachers and librarians to order and have for their children. It even provides teachers with lesson plans and worksheets for their students. For teachers that need help with their literacy activities, this “library” will be very helpful. There are some things available for free online, but for the more extensive material, it would need to be purchased. However, what's available online is very vibrant images, sounds and animation to draw students to stories.
One of the greatest resources we can go to for resources for literacy learning for students, if our very own public libraries. Often times you won't realize the amount of fun activities and games they might have to offer your students.
By Thaison Nguyen
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