Our Youngest English Language Learners and the Need for an Inclusive Reading Program
Although the majority of citizens in countries around the world have many different official languages within their borders, Canada and the United States have remained officially bilingual at most. However, increasing numbers of children in these parts of North America come from homes in which English is not the primary language spoken. In fact, projections suggest that in the United States, “english language learners (ELLs) will comprise over 40 percent of elementary and secondary students by 2030.” The methodology behind the Ooka Island Adventure was carefully developed so...
read moreAn Ooka Island Spiderweb of Learn to Read Features & Innovations!
Learn to read on Ooka Island with all of these exciting innovations and features! Click the image for a PDF version!
read moreDevelop Early Literacy Skills to Avoid the Frustration of Isolation
Unless someone is reading you these words while you listen, you are a reader. Now stop for a minute—can you remember what it’s like not to be able to read? Can you imagine what it would be like to look at these words and not be able to associate meaning with them? Actually, unless you’re fluent in every language known to man, you probably can summon this experience simply by looking at text in an unfamiliar language. I know that I get very uncomfortable when I’m unable to decipher symbols, as well as (let’s be really high-brow for a minute) when a television show has...
read moreAltitude Check – Developing Early Literacy Skills is Essential to Later Student Success
Developing Early Literacy Skills – Building A Strong Foundation for ‘High Flying’ Learners The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently released a study entitled “Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students.” I was intrigued to look through the findings since the education world often seems more compelled to study low-performing students rather than those at the upper end. With so many government initiatives focused on increasing the performance of struggling students, I can certainly understand why so much time and energy has gone into...
read morePlaying with Purpose to Save Kindergarten
Several of my Ooka Island colleagues were able to travel to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference this past week in Florida. There, they got to share the Ooka Island Adventure with hundreds of education professionals as well as attend events like the keynote speech by renowned educator and author Vivian Gussin Paley. Ms. Paley’s address was entitled “Who will save the kindergarten?” and focused on what she sees as the lamentable loss of play-centered early childhood education. With the continuously increasing number of academic...
read moreMotivational Tools
Spend even just a few minutes with us on Ooka Island and you’ll notice that we love to give incentives and rewards to our Ooka Adventurers. We know that children benefit greatly from encouragement along their hero mission, and also love to see proof of their accomplishments. That’s why we developed–in addition to all the in-game components offering positive reinforcement–a collection of downloadable motivational tools for parents and teachers to use! Our motivational tool collection includes printable Book Paths, so students can track their progress as...
read moreGame-Based Learning (GBL) Part II
The correlations between the Ooka Island Adventure and Game-Based Learning (GBL) principles, as described by Andrew Miller here, continue well beyond what we examined on Tuesday. In his post, he discussed the need for players to experience opportunities for practice and even failure, where they can make mistakes, receive feedback and further instruction, and then reach a level of ultimate success made even sweeter by the challenging journey to get there. He also cites this post where neurologist Judy Willis advocates for the video game model as a learning tool and states in summary...
read moreGame-Based Learning (GBL) Part I
Several months ago, I wrote a blog post on the growing movement in education to harness the power of digital media and interactive video games for strengthening instruction in content areas like early literacy. We are even more delighted that “Game-Based Learning” (GBL) has emerged as a powerful educational innovation (see Andrew Miller’s examination of GBL on Edutopia here) since the Ooka Island adventure falls squarely into this dynamic and cutting-edge method of instructional delivery. Mr. Miller was quick to point out that computer equipment is not required for a successful...
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