| It’s Wednesday, September 25, 2019, and time for Language Arts. I would like to invite you to check out the following Recommended Website: FreeReading.net and Learning Games For Kids FreeReading.net Age Range: 5-8 (Grades K-3, with parental supervision) This website offers a free, multi-media, open-source instructional reading program that helps educators teach early literacy. It contains a 40-week series of reading lessons covering phonological awareness and phonics activities designed for a typical kindergarten or first grade core reading program. This program is also used as an “intervention program” for kindergarten or first grade students who need additional help with learning to read. That said, (and the early emphasis on learning to read at too young an age by schools aside) the resources here can easily be used for children of all ages when they are developmentally ready to learn to read. As mentioned at the website, FreeReading provides scope and sequence activities in the following categories: Phonological Awareness: Students learn to blend and segment the sounds in spoken words. Letter Sounds: Students learn to say the most common sounds for printed letters. Sounding Out: Students learn to produce and blend the letter-sound patterns in written words. For the first time, they read. Word Recognition: Students learn to read written words without sounding them out. (Some educators refer to these words as “sight words.”) Irregular Words: Students learn to read high-frequency irregular words such as the and was by sight. Advanced Phonics: Students learn to read words with features such as inflected endings, silent letters, and multiple syllables. Letter Combinations: Students learn to say the most common sounds for letter combinations such as sh and oa. Letter Writing: Students learn the correct way to write letters. And more. All of this is accomplished with free, downloadable and printable lessons and materials such as picture cards, word cards, flashcards, decodable passages, word list generators, and much more. When you get to the site, use the Teaching Tools link on the left side of the screen as it provides a good overview of the site and how to use it to your student’s best advantage. This site provides a wide variety of early literacy tools covering phonological awareness, reading and spelling fluency, and writing comprehension. |
| Recommended Website: Learning Games For Kids Age Range: 4-12 (Grades PreK-7, with parental supervision) This ad-supported website is sponsored by our friends at Time4Learning.com. It provides free interactive, multi-media learning games that help students practice language arts skills including reading, spelling, vocabulary, and keyboarding. The site also includes learning games for other subject areas such as math, health, geography, social studies, and science. We focused on the “Literature Games” section for this review. When you get to the site, you’ll see an icon menu of the featured games. Look on the menu on the left side of the screen and click on “Literature Games.” A drop-down list appears with book titles including: Huckleberry Finn David Copperfield Gulliver’s Travels How To Eat Fried Worms Madeline The Black Stallion To Kill A Mockingbird Where the Sidewalk Ends Where the Wild Things Are Wuthering Heights Click on any title and a new page opens with a menu of games themed around that story. You’ll find games such as: Fill in the Blank (based on the story line) Hangman (using vocabulary words from the story) Spelling Games (based on words in the story) Word Search (using story vocabulary) Word-O-Rama (match definitions to story vocabulary words) If your children are reading or have read these book titles, they’ll enjoy the games. If they haven’t read the books – it may inspire them to do so. This site is a great resource for augmenting Pre-K and elementary school studies – plus, it’s a whole lot of fun for the whole family! Enjoy! |
