Teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle

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Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in working with struggling readers who require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development.

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Using Audio Books to Create Readers

What are audiobooks? They are CDs or cassette tapes that feature a narrator who reads a book aloud. There are many great children's books on audio, such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Because of Winn-Dixie, with new ones becoming available all the time.

Audiobooks can never take the place of reading aloud with a parent or teacher, of course, but they can be another great tool in your ongoing campaign to turn kids into readers.

Kids can listen to audiobooks at home, at school, in the car, or on the bus. While listening, they can follow along in the book. The best audiobooks enrich a child's exposure to language. Kids can hear the different voices and the pacing of the narrator; they can hear new vocabulary words and learn about new people, places, and experiences; and they can hear what fluent reading sounds like.

As kids get older, parents and teachers tend to stop reading aloud to kids. Try to read together as long as possible. If your child is listening to an audiobook, sometimes suggest that he or she do so without the headphones so you can also listen and share the experience of a story well told. It could be the launching point for memorable discussions between the two of you about what's happening and why, what will happen next, and how it connects with your own lives.

Related articles:

• Benefits of audiobooks for all readers
• Audiobooks: Ideas for teachers
• Why I love audiobooks (by a student with dyslexia)

Listen now!

Click here to listen to Clay Aiken read Arthur's Teacher Trouble

You'll need Windows Media Player to view this clip. Most computers already have it installed or you can download it here.

Stories for Heroes: Arthur Celebrity Audiobook

The audio clip above is from the Stories for Heroes: Arthur Celebrity Audiobook. This new CD features celebrities Clay Aiken, Kelly Ripa, Kevin Bacon, Daisy Fuentes, and others reading Arthur books by Marc Brown. Proceeds from the sale of the CD benefit children's charities run by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, National Education Association, and the Bubel-Aiken Foundation.

Visit www.storiesforheroes.com to find out more.