Effective Literacy Website #6

Reading Rockets is a national public media literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read.  Reading Rockets was launched in 2012.  The goal of Reading Rockets is to enable parents, educators, librarians, administrators and anyone else who is involved in helping a young child become a confident reader.  Reading Rockets brings the reading research to life enabling parents and educators with reading instruction that works for the learner.  Reading Rockets provides free evidence-based information about reading through a PBS television program, online services and professional development opportunities.  To learn more about Reading Rockets go this website https://www.readingrockets.org/about.

The homepage https://www.readingrockets.org has several tabs that include:  Teaching Reading, Helping Struggling Readers, Alphabetize Reading Topics, Children’s Books and Authors.  There are also sub-tabs that explains Classroom Strategies, Reading Basics, Look at Writing, Reading 101 Course, Inclusive Classrooms, Expert Interviews, Webcasts, and Glossary.  Each main tab on the homepage provides sub-tabs.  Under Teaching Reading, the Reading Basics tab offers articles about effective strategies and skills to help develop reading skills.

I especially like the Comprehension Articles.  It explains what good readers do such as draw on prior knowledge, draw inferences, self-monitoring, from mental images, summarize and retell and other skills to build comprehension.  An example provided is the Anticipation Guide Strategy.  It shares information on how and when to use it along with a printable template.  There is also a video to watch on how a second grade teacher uses the Anticipation Guide to pique the students’ interest in the book they are about to read. 

An additional resource is the Reading Rockets youtube.  These resources can be acquired from https://www.youtube.com/user/wetalearningmedia.  There are videos that provide strategies to develop a variety of reading skills.  There are also videos of interviews of authors where students can learn more about who wrote the books they are reading.

I am definitely using this website to collect additional resources to help my students develop their reading skills.  The best thing about ReadingRockets.org is that all the resources provided are free and has easy-access.