How to Use the eBooks



eBook Supports

Like any good children's book, the Read with Me eBooks tell fun stories with descriptive language and colorful pictures. But when they are shared together online, these eBooks become even more special with the help of embedded supports. These are built-in features that bring the book to life in ways, whether by reading aloud, offering extra information, or helping to teach or model a reading skill. Here are some descriptions of the embedded supports in the Read with Me eBooks.

Coaches

Animated coaches model ways of talking with children when reading the stories together. The coaches help you to ask questions and think about fun activities to do with children. They are always optional, you don't have to use them. You may choose to click the coaches when you feel like you could use some support. It is important to note that the coaches are there to give ideas, but parents and teachers should feel free to make up their own questions and activities, too.

Pedro Pedro provides parents and teachers with important questions to ask children when reading stories together.

Hali Hali provides a hint to help children respond to Pedro's prompt.

Monty Monty models a good answer to Pedro's prompt.

Terry Terry appears in the “For Parents and Teachers” version of the book, and she talks about the literacy skill that children are practicing in that book and why it is important. Terry also provides parents and teachers with ideas for other fun activities to do during or after reading the story.


Audio Clips

The Read with Me eBooks feature audio clips that read the stories aloud. This feature can help children in lots of different ways:

  • Listening to the pace of the story can help children develop fluency skills.
  • Listening to the story can help children develop phonological awareness by hearing the different sounds that words and letters make.
  • Good listening comprehension skills (how much children understand what they hear) are connected to good reading comprehension skills (how much children understand what they read).
  • Listening to the story can free up children's eyes for looking at the pictures in the story. Making sense of the pictures is another good way for children to practice comprehension.
  • Some books feature audio clips that are sound effects. These can help children learn more and imagine what is happening in the story.

Glossary

Many of the words in the Read with Me eBooks are underlined. If you click on any of these underlined words, you will be taken to the glossary where you will see the definition of the underlined word, a picture of an example of that word, and a sentence that shows how the word is used.

Not all of the words in a story will have definitions in the glossary. For other words your children are curious about, you can find them in a picture dictionary.