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Along with her background as a researcher, writer, and teacher, Joanne Meier is a mom. Join Joanne every week as she shares her experiences raising her own young readers, and guides parents and teachers on the best practices in reading.

Reading wiki: free-reading.net

January 2, 2008

A "wiki" is a website or other online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. By now, most of us are familiar with Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. But there are other wikis too.

There's a wiki devoted specifically to early literacy. Have you seen it? It's free-reading.net. According to the site, free-reading.net is an open resource center and community for early literacy teachers. Because it's a wiki, the content is continually being revised and changed. There is an advisory board for the site that "refines the ongoing research and development agenda of Free-Reading." The advisory board includes well-known researchers Catherine Snow, Michael Kamil, and Barbara Taylor.

I feel like such a fuddy-duddy when I say it, but I'm a bit suspicious of wikis! I mean, how can I trust a site whose content can be changed by virtually anyone?? But, I have to say, there are some terrific resources that you should see:

64 activities to teach phonological awareness. Several of the ones I looked at included video too.
Vocabulary lessons using popular children's books. The sequence they recommend for teaching the words is a good one.
A Chipmunk Rap. Yes, that's right. And as the mom of two young girls, this one was a BIG HIT.

In addition to activities, guides, videos and rap, free-reading.net offers a full 40-week intervention program for K/1 students. I haven't reviewed it yet, and don't see any links to research done with it, but it might be worth looking over! Now, if I can just do something about the references to "tricks" on the site.....

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Note: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.

Update: Did you see the story in last week's Ed Week? Florida approved free-reading.net for use in K-3 classrooms. Announcement here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/01/23/20brief-7.h27.html?tmp=1421435699

Posted by: Joanne | January 28, 2008 02:18 PM

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