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FreeReading.net


http://www.freereading.net

Age Range: 5-8 (Grades K-3)

ClickScholar Nancy Hogan discovered this website and helped write the
review. Her husband, Ron, is a prolific singer/songwriter, and you can read
more about him at the end of this review.

This website offers a free, multi-media, open-source instructional reading
program that helps educators teach early literacy. It contains a 40-week
series of reading lessons covering phonological awareness and phonics
activities designed for a typical Kindergarten or first grade core reading
program. This program is also used as an "intervention program" for
kindergarten or first grade students who need additional help with learning
to read.

That said, (and the early emphasis on learning to read at too young an age
by schools aside) the resources here can easily be used for children of all
ages when they are developmentally ready to learn to read.

As mentioned at the website, FreeReading provides scope and sequence
activities in the following categories:

*Phonological Awareness: Students learn to blend and segment the sounds in
spoken words.

*Letter Sounds: Students learn to say the most common sounds for printed
letters.

*Letter Writing: Students learn the correct way to write letters.

*Sounding Out: Students learn to produce and blend the letter-sound patterns
in written words. For the first time, they read.

*Word-Form Recognition: Students learn to read written words without
sounding them out. (Some educators refer to these words as "sight words.")

*Irregular Words: Students learn to read high-frequency irregular words such
as the and was by sight.

*Reading Connected Text: Students learn to read their first stories.

*Letter Combinations: Students learn to say the most common sounds for
letter combinations such as sh and oa.

*Irregular Words II: Students learn more high-frequency irregular words to
read by sight.

*Advanced Phonics: Students learn to read words with features such as
inflected endings, silent letters, and multiple syllables.

All of this is accomplished with free, downloadable and printable lessons
and materials such as picture cards, word cards, flashcards, decodable
passages, word list generators, and much more. You'll find audio and video
aids too. There is even a "literacy is priceless" blog as well as a live
forum to provide support to educators who are teaching reading.

When you get to the site, use the menu on the left side of the screen and
click on "FAQ" - as it provides a good overview of the site and how to use
it to your student's best advantage.

This site provides a wide variety of early literacy tools covering
phonological awareness, reading and spelling fluency, and writing
comprehension!

Nancy Hogan and
Diane Flynn Keith
for ClickSchooling
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