For Parents and Teachers
KidsRead was designed to address the literacy needs for young learners in grades 1st - 5th. The site was created with three instructional goals in mind:
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Students in elementary grades will use grade level fiction and nonfiction passages to determine sequence of events, draw conclusions, and summarize content with 80% accuracy by responding to an interactive web application.
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Given an appropriate grade level reading selection, students will use knowledge of phonics, word analysis, and critical thinking skills to demonstrate basic comprehension of passages while drawing conclusions, when warranted, to prompted questions from interactive web application.
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Students in elementary grades will be able to understand the function and use conventions of academic language while responding to an interactive web application.
Literacy is an issue that reaches every corner of America. According to the National Education Association, children in 4th grade who took the NAEP (National Assessment for Educational Progress) Reading Test had a high percentage who scored below proficient ("Facts about Children's Literacy").
The U.S. Department of Education reported that 38% of students scored below proficient, 31% scored proficient, and 7% scored advanced (U.S. Department of Education, 1999). This number should be alarming to educators. One organization geared toward social change, DoSomething.org, says that literacy rates in America have a substantial effect on dropout rates, juvenile offenders, and welfare rates ("11 Facts about Literacy in America").
There are countless other statistics regarding illiteracy in America, but they all have one thing in common; the clear need for better reading instruction in early elementary school. By the time a child reaches 3rd or 4th grade, clear deficiencies in reading comprehension, phonics, critical thinking, and vocabulary can be identified. If educators detect this early enough, and offer intervention activities geared toward these specific areas, students could benefit and be brought back up to or above grade level in reading.
