Kids love to learn. PBS KIDS Raising Readers is a national literacy campaign, and part of the Ready To Learn initiative, focused on building reading skills at home, at school, in child care, and in the community.
Funded by a Ready To Learn grant from the United States Department of Education, the Ready To Learn initiative is developing engaging PBS KIDS Raising Readers television programs, exciting games, playful Web sites, and easy-to-use learning resources for kids, parents, caregivers, and teachers-all with the goal of helping children ages 2 to 8 get ready to read.
"SMART Teacher is our termly newsletter available free to all education professionals working with SMART products. If you would like to register to receive SMART Teacher in printed form please fill in the form on the right."
"Can you do any better than the real colonists? You will have a copy of the London Company's Instructions to help guide you. Also, you can ask your fellow colonists and the Native Americans for advice. Be careful, though, because some advice is better than others! "
SecretBuilders is a virtual world for children 5 to 14 years old powered by a web 2.0 community of children, parents, educators, writers, artists and game developers. On SecretBuilders, children will explore virtual lands, undertake quests, play games, maintain a home, nurture a pet, and interact with their friends. Three features which form the backdrop for SecretBuilders distinguish it from other online worlds:
* Children learn through immersing themselves in the stories, themes, and concepts from the best in literature, arts and humanities. They will interact with famous historical and fictional figures and be introduced to content and characters from world civilization and the great thoughts and ideas of human creativity.
* Children will create this site, not just consume it. They are directly involved in creating this world with their ideas, critiques and contributions on virtually every aspect of the site and many of their ideas will be implemented!
* Children publish their works - writings, art, videos - making SecretBuilders their own personal store of creativity. They can invite friends and family to view their works, and comment upon them. Seeing their works published and enjoyed by others instills tremendous for self-confidence as well as motivation to do more.
"Houghton Mifflin Reading at a Glance: The link below will produce a table that lists the comprehension strategy, comprehension skill, phonemic awareness focus, phonics focus, and high frequency words taught each week of the kindergarten year."
Links on left to other grade level materials
The award-winning Random House Children's Books Web site, kids@random, offers an array of materials and activities free of charge for children, teens, parents, and educators. The innovative teachers@random Web site features many teaching tools and classroom activities, including title-specific teachers' guides developed by leading educators, biographies of authors and illustrators, and podcasts. The Magic Tree House, Junie B. Jones, and Andrew Lost online classroom clubs provide innovative curriculum tie-ins and interdisciplinary connections for teachers during the school year. Random House is also the proud host of the award-winning www.seussville.com, Dr. Seuss's home on the Internet.
"Welcome to Activity Village, where parents, teachers and children will find coloring pages, kids crafts, home school resources, puzzles, printables, jigsaws, sudoku for kids and much, much more ... Now over 5000 pages of activities for kids!"
"The site is home to a package of interactive games, stories and resources that have been developed to help emerging readers learn to read. The site can be used at school or at home. It's one of the most comprehensive interactive literacy resources on the net that is freely accessible... no area of the site is password protected.
RTZ also aims to make life easier for educators who teach reading skills. We hope you enjoy the site's simplicity, fun characters and logical structure. You'll never be more than 3 clicks (...if that!) away from what you need.
Recently over 360 educators assessed the effectiveness of the resources on www.roythezebra.com - 100% of the respondents agreed that RTZ had helped their pupils become better readers, 100% agreed that the site made reading fun and 100% said that they would use RTZ in the future."
Speakaboos brings classic children's entertainment into a digital world. Beloved characters and treasured stories are given new life through amazing celebrity performances, beautiful illustrations, and original music. At Speakaboos, children develop literacy skills while learning about technology in a safe and fun environment.