What it is: The Scholastic website is full of truly amazing resources. Today I ran across one that I hadn’t used before called Scholastic Listen & Read, I heard about it on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day. Scholastics Listen and Read is for students in first and second grade. The site does exactly what it’s name implies, it lets students listen to non-fiction stories and read along. There are 11 non-fiction stories for first grade social studies including The Path of the President, What Does the President Do, and a Celebration of Earth Day. There are 15 non-fiction stories focused on animals and food for first grade students. Second grade students have access to 10 non-fiction stories focused on social studies including Constitution Day and Welcome to a Pilgrim Village. There are also 11 short non-fiction stories for second grade students focused on animals and food. Social Studies is a hard subject to teach first and second grade students from a text book because the vocabulary and reading can be especially challenging. Scholastic Listen and Read solves this problem wonderfully with short, easy to read non-fiction stories that are read aloud to your students. As an added bonus, each story includes the Scholastic Word Wizard. This tool floats right on top of the web page. At any point, students can click on a word in the story and the Scholastic Word Wizard will give them an easy to read definition of the word. Students can also type a word into the Word Wizard to look it up.
How to integrate Scholastic Listen & Read into the classroom: Scholastic Listen & Read is ideal for any classroom or computer setting. The non-fiction stories could be read together as a class with a projector and speaker setup, individually in a computer lab setting, or in small groups as a center in the one or two computer classroom. The stories are easy to understand and the ability to look up words right from the story makes it a great place for students to learn key social studies and animals and food concepts.
Tips: Scholastic Listen & Read is a great place for ESL and ELL kids to go for English practice and vocabulary!
Leave a comment and share how you are using Scholastic Listen & Read in your classroom.
Glad you found the site helpful, and keep up the great blog!
Larry