Free Reading Assistance

Have you tried free reading?  www.freereading.net is a FREE resource when teaching a child how to read.

Used in Florida’s schools in 2008-2009, freereading is designed to provide complete reading instruction for grades K-1.  A kindergartener who may be a little behind is recommended to begin with Week One.  A delayed first grader can skip to Week Twenty-one.  The instruction is activity based and requires approximately 30 minutes a day, depending upon the number of students.  The activities are designed for an entire class room or just a small group.  There are links provided to a PDF of picture cards and/or word cards which you can then print for use.

As an open-source program, freereading’s users are able to add content which may be helpful to other users.  There is an entire section for Sharing Lessons and Ideas.  If you do not want to follow the preplanned lessons for each week, you can browse the list of activities or content added by other users and create your own curriculum.

I am using it as a supplement of sorts for Beauty’s reading instruction.  I find the activities a fun and refreshing alternative to the desk work required by our current curriculum (The Writing Road to Reading).  The combined resources make for a complete curriculum that is working for us so far.

Teaching a child with Beauty’s specific challenges requires patience and perseverance, and the understanding that she does not learn some things at the same speed as her peers.  Freereading is helping to make the process a lot more relaxing for me, which means it is less stressful for her.