iRead With Ebooks for Early Readers from @ilearnwith

I have had so many conversations with parents of young children whose children are struggling to read and the parents cannot seem to find anything that motivates them. Perhaps this new reading program called iRead With for iPad users is exactly what these families need.

“iRead With” books are interactive ebooks for early readers that encourage children to talk and interact with their parents while they learn. This wonderful concept actually brings parents and children together instead of simply throwing an electronic device at their child (which, yes, I am guilty of doing too!).

iRead With is based on the shared reading method where parents follow a prompting system that encourages them to start a conversation with the child, by asking questions about the story. Children become actively involved in the narrative and get stimulated at a multi-sensory level.

It is important to note that iRead With books are available in both the French and English language and in three different reading levels.

I encourage parents to visit the Settings page when they first download the app in order to learn about how the app works in order to get the most from your experience BEFORE you sit down with your child. The settings allow you to select your desired reading level, tweak music, sounds and more to your liking AND provide parents with very helpful tips in order to help interact with and teach your child along the way. These tips will help parents any time they are reading a book with their child.

Many parents don’t know how to teach their child how to read. It is difficult to remember our first reading teachers in school because it was SO long ago, but believe it or not, our first reading teachers were actually our parents. The iRead With books help parents learn some key tips in order to better support their child during any reading experience. They have been created in conjunction with the University of McGill’s Child Phonology Lab where “extensive research shows that the most effective read-alouds are those where children are actively involved”.

These iRead books are designed to foster language development and help preschoolers to get ready to read

iRead With books use the Dialogic Reading method that believes “read-alouds are more effective when children are actively involved commenting, making predictions and answering questions about the story”.

Children become truly engaged with the story which is a crucial step in the learning to read process.

These books have parents following a prompting system throughout the story that encourages them to start a conversation with their child, by asking questions about the story. It literally walks a parent through, step by step, how to engage their child fully in order for the best learning to occur.

iRead Wtih Books help to develop essential skills in literacy skill building including foundational literacy skills, speech and oral language, vocabulary, phonological awareness, emergent literacy concepts, narrative skills and comprehension strategies.

iRead With books allow for a fully interactive reading experience including:

Taping words:
Touch “living words” to animate the illustrations. This helps children make the connection between text and image.

Personalizing the reading experience:
Choose the characters for your avatars, select the level of difficulty for the prompts and set the reading options as you wish in the settings.

Recording your voice:
Children can record their voice for the living words and the characters’ dialogue lines.

An Interactive story:
Three way interactions between story, child and parent create a meaningful experience which helps the comprehension of the story.

Creating your own animated story:
Play with story puppets and create your own animated stories in the Story Theatre. This activity develops storytelling and narrative skills, and is also a lot of fun!

The first iRead With book is called Caillou: What’s That Funny Noise?
In this story, children follow Caillou and his parents while they try to put Caillou to bed. Caillou hears funny noises and can’t fall asleep. That’s when the action starts! Mommy and Daddy are always around to help Caillou and show him what the funny noises and shadows really are. Find out if Caillou (and family!) actually get a good night sleep.

See how the iRead With books work here:
The next story called Caillou: Show and Tell is being released on March 25, 2014. Stay tuned for even more ebooks for early readers in this iRead With series that will be rolled out later this year.

As a launch special and for a limited time only “Caillou: What’s That Funny Noise?” will be entirely FREE while “Caillou: Show and Tell” will be offered at a reduced price of $0.99 instead of $2.99.

Learn more about iRead With books:
www.facebook.com/ilearnwith
twitter.com/ilearnwith
www.youtube.com/user/ireadwith