Roundup of Resources for Literacy and Reading – January 2010

Welcome to “ten” … let’s hope it’s a perfect year! To get you started, I’ve pulled together our first monthly Roundup of New Resources for the year. When Jen Robinson and I retooled the weekly Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundups, we gave cool tools a home of their own.

The RoNR is published during the first week of each month. I am adding categories to complement the sections Jen and I use in the weekly collections.

Literacy and Reading Programs

Who am I to question a Chook in love? Over at the Book Chook blog, Susan Stephenson has a wonderful review of Questionaut, an online game on the BBC website. From Susan: “Questionaut is great for encouraging literacy skills because there is so much reading in it. The questions are all in English, and correct answers give you fuel to power your journey. I think it would be ideal for Senior Primary students with some parental help, but best for high school age. Questions I did covered English, Maths, Science.”

One of the great things about the blogosphere is how we share information and promote each others’ work (as opposed to recreating the wheel). Over at Teach with Picture Books, Keith Schoch looked at the search paths that lead from google to his blog and then identified additional resources that can help people looking for reading skills lists using picture books. The ATN Reading List, maintained by Nancy Keane and others, boasts 1,400 lists, including a focused reading skills list (which Keith created). This list fills the need of those looking for “reading skills and strategies.”

In a follow-up post, Keith offers a link to the La Villita Elementary (Texas) webpage, which has a list of picture books to teach 6 Traits of Writing.

Ideally, we get the chance to read with our kids every day. But life sometimes intercedes, and we can’t always be home to do that. I have written in the past about creating book recordings, where you create an audio book that your child can listen to when they can’t hear you in person.  FiveDads.com kicks this up a notch. On this website, you can “record your voice reading your children’s favourite bedtime story set to a magical soundtrack.” There are currently 14 titles in the collection, several of which are not available in the United States. Thanks to M Bromberg at the BookBag blog for the introduction.