Internet Field Trip: Pre-reading and Beyond

If you teach pre-readers, a major part of your time is spent researching, developing, and facilitating reading activities. Happily, to help you accomplish this daunting process, the Web provides plenty of punch. The following field trip was put together so you can concentrate the bulk of your time with the kids, doing the facilitating part.

Your excursion begins at Lil' fingers, where images talk, and when they don't, the stories are almost completely decodable. Start with the alphabet book ABC Mommy & Me. All that's required of students to read this book is point and click ability. They'll be off and reading in no time with the help of letters that "say" the sound they represent. As for non-audio books, this site offers several good ones. The stories are decodable, so after a few read-throughs with students, they'll be able to tackle the books on their own. Some of the best titles in this lot are One Little Rabbit, Draw Me Shapes, My Colors, and Who's at the Zoo? A Flash plug-in is required for all books.

Then send your kids exploring an interactive site at Scholastic's Community Club. This is a great social studies resource whose decodability allows young students to navigate independently. They'll listen to audio-recordings, introducing community workers, which also appear in print. Photographs, providing picture clues, accompany this multi-media presentation.

Another decodable lesson is the audiobook Three Little Kittens. You'll want to make sure you have an audio plug-in, like a free version of RealPlayer. Then allow students repeated exposure. Once they learn the book by heart, you can download copies, and have students read on their own — without the audio.

Next, take your students on an interactive tour of the book The Mitten, by Jan Brett. This is the author's own page devoted to her beautifully illustrated version of the classic. Students use read-for-detail skills as they identify animals from clues you read aloud. The beautiful illustrations that made Brett's book a must-have are colorfully re-created. You can even dramatize the story with full-color, downloadable masks of each animal character.

After all this exposure to reading, students are probably anxious to create their own stories. Stop by Discovery.com's Clip Art Gallery. Students can look through hundreds of graphics from this archive for use in dictated stories, or as rebuses — for the pre-reader who no longer has any use for the "pre."

Once they've made their books, students will want to design jackets. To help out, guide them through this simple lesson plan courtesy of CanTeach.

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The Frog in the Pond

by Wil Mara and Cheryl Mendenhall

SET FEATURES:

Familiar ideas, objects, actions, and vocabulary
Simple, short sentences
Frequent word repetition
One to four lines of text per spread
"New word" lists help build reading vocabularies
Skill-specific series promotes independent reading
Meets Reading First funding
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Library Binding | Grades 1-2

The Frog in the Pond

Grades 1-2 $13.65

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