Page 12 - Ziptales Program Manual - US

Reading Modes

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more you learn, the more places you will go.”
- Dr Seuss
Reading is undoubtedly the basis of all of the skills that children learn in school. To see the delight in the eyes
of a 5 year old who sounds out the words on a milk carton for the first time, or the absorption of a 7 year old who
can lose herself in a ‘chapter book’ is truly wonderful. And all of us, parents, teachers, and employers owe a debt
to those early years’ classroom practitioners who transmit this skill to their charges.
From the very beginning, Ziptales has seen its mission as to encourage the skills of reading, and also the
love of reading. Once children engage with reading, they have an exciting passport to the world outside.
The Ziptales ‘library’ seeks to support the development of a balanced reading program, from Pre-K through
to Sixth Grade. This involves several things: reading aloud, shared reading, guided reading and independent
reading. Or, put succinctly, “reading to children, reading with children, and reading by children”.
While Ziptales is rich in reading material across all year levels (over 300 stories), there is much more. The
Common Core State Standards module maps all content areas to these objectives, and the Language Arts
Lessons, provide teachers with mini lessons designed to fit with grade level appropriate reading content and
strategies. For example the voiceovers in Easy Readers, Storytime and Timeless Tales can be used to model
fluent reading and correct phrasing during Shared Reading. These stories, when shown on an Interactive
Whiteboard, become ‘big books’ and can be discussed, without the voiceover, showing various text processing
strategies: prediction, monitoring reading, decoding, echo and choral reading. Choral reading can be further
enjoyed using Nursery Rhymes from the Pre-K section and the simpler poems from Rhyme Time.
A Shared Reading session with tablets can also make much use of the artwork illustrating all stories, inviting
children to discuss facial expressions, the effect of animations and use of colors to enhance meaning. It also
allows for the introduction of texts that children could not necessarily decode, offering the chance for language
and thinking enrichment. This is particularly important for children with special needs who can be extended with
the use of ‘challenging texts’ providing pleasure and enjoyment without stress.

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