Effective Literacy Website #1 Reading Bear

Reading Bear

            Reading Bear (https://www.readingbear.org) is a free, non-profit literacy website that focuses on assisting beginning readers develop vocabulary and phonics skills. This website is geared towards beginning readers but can assist any struggling readers or English Language Learners. This website helps promote the beginning stages of literacy in young readers by focusing on letter sounds and meaning. 

            Reading Bear is a project created by WatchKnowLearn.org, a free educational website that offers many learning videos based on topic. Both Reading Bear and Watch Know Learn are projects of the St. Charles Place Education Foundation. Reading Bear is a non-profit website that is ad-free and completely free to use with and without an account. On the website, there are over 50,000 literacy-based presentations to help develop literacy skills. These presentations were created by website contributors and volunteers. All images and video clips were donated by ShutterStock. 

            Reading Bear is an engaging website that takes the traditional format of a regular reading workbook into a more modern setting. Each presentation focuses on one specific skill. For example, identifying the short vowel A sound. The viewer has seven choices of how the media is presented to them. They can choose to have words read out slowly or quickly, in flash card format, or without sound and just the words appearing. Each presentation is interactive and has a presenter prompt questions and gives time for students to read on their own. 

            All presentations have user friendly media controls such as play/pause, next, back, and repeat. Each presentation can have text size and audio adjusted. All the clips on the presentation are engaging and colorful, which will appeal to young readers. Each skill has different parts to the presentation, so readers get more practice with different words. When a reader is done with one letter, they are able to access a whole library of different decoding practice. 

            Reading Bear is a great website that allows young readers to practice beginning literacy skills. The website is simple enough to navigate around and get access to all the free resources. All of the available learning tools are user friendly and able to be customized to reader preference. Readers will surely enjoy the interactive presentations that allow them significant practice.