Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your First Grade children, your Kindergarten students, and even all those wiggly Pre-K learners could walk through your classroom door on the first day of school already reading?
The new KBN fast-track Read At Two literacy project – developed for pre- Pre-School early reading at home – is an important first step toward making that happen.
The bright, carefully-designed foundational reading books provide the core teaching materials to help children begin to read even before they are two. These KBN books are all free, of course. And the Parent Handbook tells parents and other pre-school caregivers exactly what to do.
Unfortunately we’re not quite there yet with universal reading at two as a national educational initiative or standard parenting home practice.
The good news is that these same early reading development strategies, with their expert foundational content and new KBN projection reading technology, are also here in our new Pre-K and Kindergarten book categories. And teachers from Pre-K through First Grade can now use these fresh early reading books in the classroom – to provide valuable learning advantages to young readers every day.
Here’s how it works.
1. You can really teach what children need to learn.
All of the books in KBN’s Read At Two series, Pre-K series and Kindergarten series are designed to help children learn the core elements of literacy competence identified by both state and national educational standards, right from Pre-K through First Grade.
Inside of each book in the Pre-K and Kindergarten series you'll find an abbreviated learning standards page to help identify the book's specific learning benefits and pedagogical strategy, with a separate printout of the complete learning standards provided as well.
2. You can give every child the support of an extra one-on-one teacher – right at home.
When teachers and parents can both work together to help a child discover the power and satisfaction of reading, parents naturally want to participate and encourage their children more.
And because our new KBN Read At Two program handbook is actually parent-oriented, you as a teacher can use it to direct and encourage more active parent interest and invaluable learning reinforcement – by reading the same free KBN page-turning books with their children either in a traditional on-paper book format or live and on-line right at home.
Of course when parents discover KBN’s new Read At Two program early, and actually begin teaching their children to read one or two years before the children arrive at school, it’s just so much the better. Why is such a very early reading pattern with toddlers so important?
As discovered through a major longitudinal study by educational researchers Hart and Risley [The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3, In: American Educator, Spring, 2003], a child’s vocabulary use at age 3 is strongly predictive of both language skills and reading comprehension at age 9-10. And many parents, although they may love and nurture their children in other ways, simply don’t actively speak and converse with their toddlers enough to build their vocabulary and related cognitive powers to the level necessary for higher learning success.
That’s what daily reading with books can achieve. And that’s what KBN’s new national initiative is all about.
3. You can have more fun teaching while your class learns more.
Early learning is all about play and fun. With the excitement of KBN’s fresh live bookcasting™ technology you can enable all of the children in your classroom to share the same big reading experience together, projected live and bright up on the classroom wall.
Even a foundational book can become a major page-turner!
And that means high-impact teaching also becomes a lot easier on the teacher.
4. You can use different books to differentiate early learning, too – and help children with special needs learn to read more quickly.
Finally, when a child arrives in your classroom with a learning disability, or speaking a different language, you can immediately reach for KBN’s basic-word books to do something about it. Often children with special needs require more time and focus on very simple text
concepts until they can master even basic reading schemas.
And ESL readers, just learning the language, can be helped to build an active vocabulary by reading works with a tight focus on common utilitarian language for objects, actions, feelings and experiences.
Along with KBN’s Read At Two, Pre-K, and Kindergarten book series, of course, your whole class will enjoy the special pleasure and excitement of reading all of the free books in the fast-growing Kids’ Book Network library.
All teachers and schools, of course, can help us spread the word about Read At Two to every parent of every student in their school – to help all the next incoming Pre-K students arrive at school more learning-smart and school-ready.
