Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: Literacy lowdown

Literacy Lowdown – Some Helpful Resources

November 16, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Today’s Literacy Lowdown is dedicated to sharing some online resources that can help you teach reading at home. Happy reading!

Help With Spelling! Spelling City is a cool free site that lets you make your own spelling lists – a great way to combine vocab words into spelling lessons. Your kids can practice their words, take tests, and play games with the words you choose. They also have some cool vocabulary games that your kids can play using the same words. Check out this site for a fun way to do spelling!

studying for your weekly spelling test has never been easier.

StoryNory publishes weekly audio stories for kids. Our three year old LOVES to hear stories, and these are well told, entertaining, and FREE. You can listen to them right on their website or download the files as .mp3s and make CDs–a lifesaver in the car!

The Reading Tub is a site dedicated to promoting literacy. They have great suggestions for children’s books and great tips on literacy and reading with your kids.

Literacy Lowdown – Sept 1

September 1, 2008 / / 2 Comments

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend! Our thoughts are with all of those that are being affected by Gustav.

This week’s Literacy Lowdown offers some cool resources that you’ll be sure to use again and again. Have fun browsing…

Book Hooked: Do you remember that first book that really got your interest? The one that made you love reading? Well, go share it with the world over First Book! They’re running a voting contest to find out what the top 50 books are that made people love reading as kids. At the end of the voting (Sept 15th), the state that wins will receive 50,000 of those books to give to children in need. What a great cause…spread the word!

Cool Tool: What’s my number one tip for parents and teachers? Read aloud to your kids!. There are so many great things that come from reading books aloud…so keep on reading to them! Here’s a really cool (and totally free) resource that allows you to upload different types of text (word docs, PDFs, websites, etc.) and then have the computer read it to your child. Read The Words can be so useful! You can also use this as a teaching tool for writing. When I was in the classroom, I would always make my kids read their writing aloud to me so they could hear what it sounded like. About 90% of the time they would catch their own mistakes and make it better without me saying a word (just because they could hear that it didn’t sound right or make sense). This would be a great tool for older kids to use for that purpose.

The Classics: While on the topic of reading books aloud…here’s a great free resource for getting classic audio books. You can download the MP3s and even listen to them on your iPod. What an awesome way to expose your kids to the classics!

Comprehension Tips: As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the process of adding to our Comprehension section. Stay tuned for the upcoming Comprehnsion Strategies and Skills series of posts! In the meantime, Collen Felz shares some great tips on encouraging reading comprehension that go along with the suggestions I’ll soon be sharing with you.

Literacy Lowdown – 8/24

August 24, 2008 / / 0 Comments

We’ve had a great week here at Reading Coach…we’ve nearly doubled our readers! We’re getting a lot of great emails and comments from you guys – sharing your stories and asking some really good questions (I’ll soon turn some of those into a post). People are passing us around and we’re getting in contact with some really cool families. So a big thanks to all of you out there that support us!

With that in mind…there’s still one more week left till we giveaway the gift card to Abunga.com. So feel free to share us with your friends who might want a chance to win too!

In other news…here are some great links for you to check out to see what others are doing this week. Happy reading!

Dr. Mommy shares her tips for motivating your teen to read. Very useful!

The Little Blue School is organizing an awesome literary event/contest for homeschoolers of varying ages. It sounds like something really cool to get into if your kids enjoy writing. Check out her post about their Book Arts Bash for more details! She also shares a pretty creative Unit Study on elections (called Vote For Me!) that’d be perfect to do this year.

This Homeschool Mom generously shares her novel guides with you so that you can have your kids do some creative things with the novels they read. Many of her activities help children deepen their comprehension of a book (and vocabulary words) in a fun way!

Catherine shares her experiences with teaching reading to her preschool daughter. It’s always nice to see when kids can have a hand in leading their own learning…even at a very young age!

Okay, so I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of kids watching tons of T.V. – but a show that’s created for the purpose of expanding children’s vocabularies gets a big thumbs up! Read more about this new show and how it can help your early reader at Fun With Vocabulary.

Literacy Lowdown – 8/17

August 17, 2008 / / 3 Comments

Check out this week’s reading roundup for some cool posts from other homeschoolers…happy reading!

Dawn at Day by Day Discoveries has discovered that reading is the key to her daughter’s success with math problems – and that they’re actually fun now!

Yielded Heart shares her tools for organizing her homeschool…she really likes making reading logs for her kids.

No Time For Flashcards shares a fun Summer Olympics activity for you to do with your child that includes a book that ties in with the activity. Check out her site for tons of ideas for other crafts that go along with books!

Topsy-Techie, who’s working on “raising homegrown geeks”, shares her reviews for online/computer programs geared towards helping kids who have learning disabilities with reading and other subjects. There are some really cool programs on there that can be used by anyone – but is especially helpful to those who need some help with special education for homeschoolers.

While on the topic of online games and such, Vocabulary Can Be Fun reminds their readers of the Fun With Vocabulary Games that they have on their site. They have some great resources on there to help your child build their vocabulary!

Literacy Lowdown

August 9, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In the spirit of keeping our great readers updated with the latest in homeschool reading and beyond, I’m launching our new recurring post named Literacy Lowdown. Visit the site each week (or better yet subscribe here to receive updates automatically!) to learn what is going on around the blogosphere as it relates to homeschool reading and more. There are so many great resources, stories, tips, and news out there that you can spend hours surfing for good information. Well, let me do some of the work for you by rounding up a variety of interesting posts from other homeschooling families! Feel free to email me or leave links in the comments that you think our readers would like.

Kicking off our first Literacy Lowdown is…

Carletta over at Successful Homeschooling, who shares her homeschooling reading success tips. They’re similar to Dr Mommy’s useful homeschool reading tips…the simplified version, of course. Check them both out for some great ideas!

Carrie Lauth shares her guide to recognizing your child’s learning style…this can help you figure out ways to make reading instruction fun and interesting.

Spunkyhomeschool enlightens one of her readers about “living books” and shares how awesome it is to use these to teach her children without having to rely strictly on textbooks.

Happy reading!

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