A new report from Alberta, Canada indicates that fewer students are entering kindergarten each year with the necessary literacy skills to begin reading. As a result, according to Christie Watson, lead teacher of the Comprehensive Literacy program, only 78% of kindergarteners in the 2015-2016 school year were prepared enough to move on to Grade 1 … Continue reading “Literacy Begins Early”
Author: AceReader Blogger
The AceReader blogging team is made up of specialists in a number of different areas: literacy, general education, content development, and educational software. For questions about posts, please submit them in the form below. For suggestions about blog topics, please email them to blogger@acereader.com.
Physical Exercise and Learning
When you want to make your body fit, you exercise. When you want to make your brain sharper, you also exercise? And we’re not talking about crossword puzzles or mind games here, but actual, physical aerobic exercise. Why should that be? Let’s take a look at what we know so far about the correlation between … Continue reading “Physical Exercise and Learning”
Teaching Your Child to Love Reading
Reading is an essential part of life, and better readers make better learners, no matter what they’re trying to learn. According to the American Library Association, “Individuals read to live life to its fullest, to earn a living, to understand what is going on in the world, and to benefit from the accumulated knowledge of … Continue reading “Teaching Your Child to Love Reading”
New, Easily-accessible AceReader Education Edition Winner of 2016 Tech & Learning Award of Excellence.
Grand Junction, CO (October 12, 2016) – Tech & Learning magazine announced the winners of its 2016 Awards of Excellence on October 5, and the new, Education Edition of AceReader made the list. The winners were decided by a panel of Tech & Learning advisors that individually evaluated hundreds of products, and they include “innovative … Continue reading “New, Easily-accessible AceReader Education Edition Winner of 2016 Tech & Learning Award of Excellence.”
Chunking to Improve Reading Comprehension
Trying to read a large amount of text, whether it be a fourth-grader encountering their first chapter book or a chemistry major working their way through the latest whitepaper, can be a daunting experience. Chunking is the process of dividing up a text into shorter, more manageable segments. This provides the reader with words in … Continue reading “Chunking to Improve Reading Comprehension”
Targeting the Young to Promote Adult Literacy
As part of the Development Lexicon Project study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin are currently studying how words are read by people ranging from first-graders to seventy-year-olds. The researchers are focusing on three different characteristics of a word: its length, its frequency of use within the language, and its … Continue reading “Targeting the Young to Promote Adult Literacy”
Visualization and its Role in Reading
Visualization is a large part of the learning process. We picture how a word looks or mentally “see” how a character looks as he is described by the author. But what if you weren’t able to visualize? Some people can’t. The condition is called “aphantasia,” and we’re only beginning to understand how this affects the … Continue reading “Visualization and its Role in Reading”
The 9 Inalienable Rights of the Reader
You may not have thought about it before, but as a reader, you do have rights. These rights are just as valid for you as for people who engage in other forms of pleasure, and sometimes more so. Don’t be afraid of the consequences – they’ll take care of themselves for you. Read through the … Continue reading “The 9 Inalienable Rights of the Reader”
Speed Reading vs Reading Efficiency
Some people claim that speed reading is impossible – that’s not exactly true. If by “speed reading” you mean reading at 2,000 or more words per minute (wpm) with 100% comprehension on all types of text, then, no, it’s not possible unless you have a photographic memory with perfect recall. Most of us don’t fall … Continue reading “Speed Reading vs Reading Efficiency”
Common Core and Vocabulary Instruction
What is the best way to teach vocabulary to young students? The creators of the United States’ Common Core curriculum indicate that how vocabulary is introduced is the key to students’ success and that using the real world as context for that introduction can be highly beneficial. Nell K. Duke, a professor of literacy, language, … Continue reading “Common Core and Vocabulary Instruction”