Listen and Read has fantastic online reading activities for early learners. There are 54 nonfiction read-along books that include words, images and sound. You can sort books by subject including: Community, American History, Animals, Civics and Government, Environmental Studies, Plants and Flowers, Science and Social Studies. You can also sort books by level (A or B).
How to integrate Listen and Read into your curriculum: Non-fiction can be hard to read in the early years. It often includes unfamiliar words and vocabulary and concepts that students don’t have a lot of prior knowledge of. Scholastic’s Listen and Read is fantastic because it helps students navigate their way through non-fiction with the support of a read-aloud, sounds and images. These interactive books help students better comprehend content because they aren’t focused on the words they are stumbling through. At the end of the book students can click on the unfamiliar new vocabulary to hear the word said again. This follow-up exposure reinforces word recognition, vocabulary and ideas.
Tracy Watanabe on 06 Sep 11K-12 FREE Opportunity: If your students investigate bugs, use a microscope, need an authentic purpose for research, I'd like to suggest partnering with Bugscope. You get to collaborate with expert scientists to explore bugs (i.e. looking at a bug's tongue). You would do this all via the internet. It looks amazing! Below is a response from them, with an attachment. A news-release summarizes a history of Bugscope (http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2011/0729sp_spore.shtml). Bugscope allows teachers everywhere to provide students with the opportunity to become microscopists themselves-the kids propose experiments, explore insect specimens at high-magnification, and discuss what they see with our scientists-all from a regular web browser over a standard broadband internet connection. You sign up, ask your students to find some bugs, and mail them to us. We accept your application, schedule your session, and prepare the bugs for insertion into the electron microscope. When your session time arrives, we put the bug(s) into the microscope and set it up for your classroom. Then you and your students login over the web and control the microscope. We'll be there via chat to guide you and answer the kids' questions. If you would like to see the response from one class who have done this, read Mrs. Krebs' blog post: http://krebs.edublogs.org/2011/09/04/bugscope-session/ If you need any help with this, just let me know. If you end up taking them up on this FREE collaboration, please let me know when/where so I can drop by. This looks fascinating! Kind regards,Tracy
