book with label literacytwo apples with plus sign and label mathbeaker with label sciencemap with label social studiesorganizational chart with label information organizationartist's palette with label artmusical note with label musicmagnifying glass over a piece of paper with label accommodationslight bulb with label ideasoffice tools with label utilities

Literacy

Early Language Arts demos from Riverdeep.

Letter Machine (. Win . Mac .). Press a letter on the keyboard and hear a word and see an animation. Great for early letter/sound matching. Free.

My Friend (. Win . Mac .). Early learning about adjectives. Lots of fun. Free.

Travel the World with Timmy. Create a story, hear it and print your own book out. Free.

Timmy in Argentina . Win . Mac
Timmy in Japan . Win . Mac
Timmy in Kenya . Win

Desert Sunset (. Win . Mac .). Explore the desert. Free.

Learn Letters (Win) Learn Sounds (Win) Learn Sounds Blends (Win) from Owl and Mouse Software. Free.

Looking for Words ( . Win . Mac .) from Attainment. Early vocabulary and language building with accessibility features. Trial.

Show Me Spelling (. Win . Mac .) from Attainment. Spelling program with accessibility features. Trial.

IntelliTalk II activities (requires players Win . Mac) from IntelliTools.

ABC First Grade Sight Words (. Win . Mac .) gives practice writing early vocabulary.

Journal in 3 Tenses (. Win . Mac .) is a fun writing activity about yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Beautiful Insects (. Win . Mac .) helps with reading comprehension.

Comparing Bugs (. Win . Mac .) helps with reading comprehension.

ReadyMade Primary Writing sampler Win . Mac .

LittleFingers Classroom Vol. 2 (. Win . Mac .) is an example of software from LittleFingers. You can download other demos from their website.

Word Command (Win) from WordCommand, a great high school level vocabulary program. Includes audio pronuncation of the target words. Trial with fixed 25 word list.

TumbleReader (. Win . Mac .) from TumbleBooks. Electronic books for kids. Free reader, includes 3 stories.

QuickTime (. Win . Mac ) from Apple. The Pro version includes tools for captioning video. This allows you to caption movie trailers, creating video books that can be very engaging for students who are struggling with reading. Below are some ideas.

  1. Instructions for captioning video.
  2. Captioned example: Shrek

In addition , you can take the transcript from a movie trailer to use for reading and writing activities. You can also use captioned or non-captioned trailers and create cross curriculum thematic lessons. Below are some ideas. These are also good to use if you want to practice captioning since the transcript is already avialble.

  1. StarWars Trailer
  2. SW transcript, text file
  3. SW ideas, pdf file
  4. Iron Giant Trailer
  5. IG transcript, text file
  6. IG ideas, pdf file

Resources

Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks (pdf file)

Put Reading First: Helping Your Child to Read (pdf file)

Making the Connections: Reading, Effective Strategies & Technology Tools (pdf file)

Clifford's Tips for Parents is a cool looking selection of tips to help parents with the different areas of reading. Includes a cover letter from the Governor of Florida. It may be hard to print out since the middle section is designed for 11x17 inch size paper (tabloid).

Reading Activities for Parents (pdf file)

Information Mapping - Internet - Go to "information mapping - show me", then scroll to bottom of page and click on "show me".

Game Goo - Online reading activities.

Between the Lions - Online reading activities.

Help Me 2 Learn - Online reading activities.

The Little Explorers Picture Dictionary - Internet

Startwrite 5.0 - Internet

Write a Play - Fun, simple online writing activity.

Reading Software Reviews from the Florida Center for Reading Research.

Sound Reading Solutions is a series of reading software programs based on current reading research. There is an online demo you can try out.

Colored Overlays from the National Reading Styles Institute is a website that discusses the use of colored transpariences to help students read. This strategy can also be used with word processors that allow you to change the background and forground text colors, such as ReadPlease 2003, Write OutLoud, WYNN, and others.

Don Johnston Learning includes great resources on literacy. Here are a few examples:

  1. Beginning Literacy Framework
  2. Reading Chart

Reading assessment "Cool Tools" from Project Central. I have broken the document down into the basic components.

  1. Overview
  2. Phonological Awareness
  3. Phonics
  4. Fluency
  5. Vocabulary
  6. Comprehension
  7. References

Core vocabularies from the University of Nebraska. Here are a couple of files.

  1. Early Core Vocabularies
  2. Weighted Vocabularies
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