If you haven’t come across Reading Rockets yet, it’s a must-read site for parents of young readers. To convince you, I thought I’d take you through some of its highlights. I hope I do it justice as it’s so packed with advice, interviews, contests, lessons, reading recommendations and activities for young readers that it’s hard to cover it all.
A Comprehensive Source for Teaching Kids to Read
Reading Rockets is a comprehensive source of information for adults teaching young kids to read. That sounds a bit dry and doesn’t do it justice, because the site is packed full of great articles, lists of age-appropriate books, interviews with authors and archived programs shown on PBS. Let me take you through some of my favorite parts of the site.
I’m looking at this site from the perspective of being a parent, but note that there are also sections for teachers, administrators, librarians and childcare providers.
Reading Resource for Parents
Let’s start of the beginning – the for parents tab.
This page is packed full of articles providing hints and tips on how to approach reading with your child. Titles, such as ‘Sound it Out’, ‘Thinking Like a Detective’ and “Target the Problem’. This is the homepage for more in-depth sections such as ‘Reading together’, ‘Early literacy’, “Connecting with your child’s teacher and school’ and ‘Helping your struggling reader’.
Interviews with Children’s Book Authors
Delving deeper, I really liked the ‘Children’s books and authors’ page. It features over 100 video interviews with children’s book authors, book lists by theme and age, a section on poetry and multicultural books.
PBS Television Programs
Another favorite section is their archived programs from PBS – you can watch these online anytime.
Recommended Links
If you haven’t had enough yet, this site also has a huge list of recommended links. They have a great section for families/parents and I’ll certainly be pouring over this list for more great reading.
