Effective Literacy Website #4

 

IRA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #4

Website & URL: https://www.readingbear.org/

Reading bear is a free, online, ad-free, non-profit project of the St. Charles Place Education Foundation. Reading bear is an online program that teaches beginning readers vocabulary and other related concepts, while systematically introducing all the main phonetic patterns in the English language. This online program uses innovative rich media and is meant for children ages four to seven. The homepage of this website contains many presentation videos that introduces children to many early phonetic patterns such as, vowels, diagraphs, and blends. In order for students to benefit from these presentations, students should already have basic letter and sound identification.

            Under each presentation for each skill, you have the option to select how you want to practice the skill. There are seven ways you can practice the skill: sounding out the word slowly, sounding out the word quickly, sounding out the word independently, sounding out the word independently with the help of prompting and pictures, sounding out the word independently without the help of prompting or pictures, reading a sentence with the word independently with the help of prompting and pictures and reading a sentence with the word independently without the help of prompting or pictures. There is also a quiz that accompanies each presentation.

            For teachers, there is a teacher guide provided under the “training videos” tab on the homepage of this website. In this guide, it will show teachers how to get the most out from Reading Bear. It shows step by step instructions on how to get started with this program with your students and offers general advice on teaching children to read. A feature that I found interesting about this site is that teachers can create students accounts from just one email address, allowing the teacher to track individual progress. This can be done under “My Account.”

            Reading Bear is an effective literacy tool because it provides beginning reading students practice on basic phonemic patterns through the use of interactive presentations. It features systematic and explicit instruction, which is great for students who are just learning how to read.