Listen and Read
by Gabby Balza, Fall 2012 Intern
“Pick out any book you want.” These are the words my
preschool tutor said to me when I was seven years old and still couldn’t read.
My mom had already tried everything: flashcards, bedtime stories and several
programs promising increased literacy in young children. But all of them ended with
me sitting on the floor still trying to pronounce banana while flashcards and magnets containing different vowels and
consonants covered my body. Luckily, working with a tutor was the last stop
before reading became less of a struggle and more of a favorite pastime for me.
When I look back on the differences in teaching methods between the failed and
successful attempts at my literacy, I can’t help but think of all the
techniques that my tutor used with me involving audio and video, helping me to
understand the story—not just isolated words on a flashcard. We’d sit there in
front of each Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bear book. My tutor would point to every
word while I looked at the corresponding picture; she repeated each sentence
three times, after which I mimicked it all back to her. Instead of flashcards
sticking to my body, I now had the words actually sticking in my mind. The
techniques my tutor used with me remind me of the ones used by Scholastic’s
Listen and Read program and Disney’s Digital Books to help improve the reading
skills of students.
Both of these products take advantage of different
sensory techniques normally used by people to obtain information. Scholastic’s
Listen and Read program provides photographs pertaining to the topic of each book,
allowing children the opportunity to see cultural artifacts such as a hogan, which is a Navajo house made of
mud and wood. The Disney Digital Books program utilizes illustrations on each
page to help children visualize the characters and events taking place within a
story. At the end of these books there are interactive games that pertain to
each story, giving children the chance to engage with the text. Since both
products cater to children’s visual needs, they allow children to experience
the story environments in a more enhanced fashion.
Audio components also play a role in these products.
Disney Digital Books provide recordings of the stories in multiple languages.
The books also integrate musical scores from movies, such as the The Lion King’s “Hakuna Matata,” helping
children to immerse themselves in the tone of the story while stimulating their
creativity. Listen and Read also provides recordings for each story, a feature
enabled when children click the LISTEN button on each page. This option provides
an opportunity for children to listen to vocabulary as often as they need.
For young readers, these different visual and audio
components are what can help a text become more than just words on a page.
Being able to picture, hear and imagine the stories help children think of
reading as an experience rather than an obstacle. They can go on a journey with
the characters and events, and with different modes of accessibility, children
can follow along whether at home on a computer or on the bus ride to school
with a tablet.
Further Reading:
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