Literacy Website #5

            Reading Bear (http://www.readingbear.org/) is a free online program that is a part of WatchKnowLearn.org that supports beginning readers with phonetic patterns and vocabulary skills. Reading Bear has about 50 presentations. It builds on consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, CVCE words, syllables, digraphs, initial blends, vowel teams, and more.

            For each phonetic pattern there are seven different kinds of presentations. It starts off with Sound it Out Slowly, then Sound it Out Quickly, and Let me Sound it Out. That presentation says the word in different speeds and illustrates a picture, shows the word in a sentence, and illustrates that sentence. When the sentence appears you can pause the video and click on any word and it will sound it out and say it.   The presentation also includes Audio Flashcards, Silent Flashcards, Audio Sentences, and Silent Sentences. After each presentation you can Take a Quiz and also Review the whole unit.

            Each presentation has control buttons that allows you to go around a presentation. The Auto button plays the presentation as a video.  If you turn it off, you can use the arrow buttons to go back and forth. On top of the presentation, you can control the presentation size.  Reading Bear also has a settings button that allows users to change the font or always show video of word spoken. 

            Registering on Reading Bear is optional but if you do register it will show the percentage of presentations you’ve mastered, and how many you viewed. Checkmarks, stars, and numbers let you track how many times you viewed a presentation, or parts of a presentation, and also whether you’ve mastered the words.  Reading Bear is an excellent website for young children to build and master phonetic sounds and words.