If you’ve noticed your child often make an excuse when you try to get him to read a book, then it’s time to make some amendments in the reading experience provided to the child. We understand how tiresome it could be for parents to approach their tiny-ones with a book without having to play a game of catch-and-cook with them around the house. Well as you sigh, we have some good news to share.

‘Highlights’ is everyone’s favorite ‘reading platform’ and has been endorsed by parents and teachers, from across the globe. Being a new-age reading platform, Highlights aim is to motivate every child to not only be a voracious reader, but also be a champ at developing good writing skills and learn to communicate effectively.

Highlights delightfully launched its Readers+ kit which entails 500 choicest stories that include fiction and non-fiction reading material across 10 differentiated content areas & reading levels, through its app. This makes it easier for parents and teachers to choose a ‘topic’ for their child’s next reading schedule. Having a consolidated platform saves time on having to do research and going from one bookstore to the other, to hunt for story books. The portal is also thoughtfully designed to enable the child to himself browse through the books and various activities and follow the self-explanatory instructions that guide him to navigate seamlessly on the portal.

Wondering how easy it is to access the Readers+ Kit?

Children simply need to open the App and click the ‘green icon’ on the Readers+ kit homepage to access their favorite book title. After the book has been read, children even get to follow-up their reading by participating in ‘fun activities’ and earn rewards for completing various tasks. This helps the child to recollect the story and tests his retention power. It also boosts the child’s morale and motivates him to read with clarity, rather than browsing through the pages.

Learning to Speak English with correct pronunciation can be rewarding too!

Children mimic songs, conversations & stories uttered by adults and hence teachers & parents need to make it a mindful practice to always choose the right words & use correct pronunciation around their children. It is however not feasible for the child to be around an elder all through the day, and that’s where the Readers+ kit comes handy.

The ‘speaking activity’ is specifically designed to assist our little champs to improve their verbal fluency by practicing speaking English sentences correctly. Five featured sentences from every story are pre-recorded and the child needs to listen to each one of them attentively. It is then the child’s turn to repeat the sentence with the same finesse as he just heard in the recording. The app immediately checks the correctness of the speech and rates the speaking fluency of the child. This motivates the child to continue improving his score gradually by repeating every word in the sentence correctly. In this manner, the elementary school goer develops immense confidence and demonstrates proactiveness the next time he is asked to participate in a group discussion at school.

Effective listening is the key to proper communication & writing

After having read and repeated the sentence verbally, the Readers+ app takes the activity level a notch higher. The child is asked to concentrate on the sentence from the story that is read aloud to him and then he has to proceed towards arranging the words of the phrase that are presented to him in a jumbled manner. This exercise requires the child to first listen attentively, then understand what each word in the sentence stands for, and then arrange the words correctly to form a sentence. At the end of the session, triumphant efforts of the child are rewarded with a star badge added to their profiles.

Inculcating critical thinking at an early age

To complete the learning experience and unlock the true potential of the children, a set of questions are asked at the end of the story to test the child’s comprehensive capabilities. The child is given the opportunity to pen down his understanding in 50 to 100 characters. This concluding exercise is an excellent medium to test the child’s grammar, sentence formation skills, and usage of spellings.

If you haven’t already subscribed to the Highlights app, it’s time to get started. With so many power-packed features, we are sure your geniuses will gain even more confidence through their journey of becoming voracious readers, writers, and effective communicators.

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Think of Amazon and their Kindle books. Their platform and ease of buying and reading books have taken the reading industry by storm. Kutubee, which is an interactive reading platform for kids, functions pretty much the same way. But in this particular software, books are pre-loaded onto a digital reading platform that is easily accessible and packs a lot of features in order to keep the process simple for both teachers and children.

About Kutubee and Its Features

Kutubee provides a very unique reading experience for our children to read and engage with over 1500+ illustrated stories in English, Arabic and French that are carefully hand-picked by experts.

Some key features:

• Increase knowledge – a variety of stories at different reading levels for all kinds of interests
• Stimulate creative thinking where the students can analyze the content of the story by utilizing tools such as highlighting to see the bigger picture
• Customize avatars of each student to personalize their learning space and journey
• Able to listen to stories and you can follow along as the words being read are highlighted
• Books are classified according to:

1. IB Primary Years Program (PYP)
2. Level Reading (example Level 1 and 2)
3. Subject
4. Age

• A variety of sound effects are present in the reading of the book
• Users are able to record and save their voice so that students can present their readings to teachers, and teachers can also model how a certain story is read
• Offline reading is available for maximum exposure when students are on the go
• A few questions are asked at the end of each story to keep the students engaged and test their comprehension in the process
• Teachers have a comprehensive portal that allows them to track student and class progress
• Teachers can also generate detailed Excel reports that highlight class statistics and metrics
• Teachers can curate and build their own collections of frequently used books and set reading assignments for their students
• A significant number of teacher resources have been compiled by Kutubee to aid teachers with the initial adoption of this application

Feature Highlight: Read to Me

It enables the child to listen to the recorded stories anywhere and without an internet connection on all smart devices. In addition, it includes a lot of sound effects. Children can easily browse through the categorized books and enjoy reading at school and on their own time. In addition, children, parents, and teachers can enrich the content of the stories within Kutubee by recording their own readings or creating and adding a new dialog. It will facilitate the interaction between educators and parents by means of keeping you updated on and engaged in the reading development of the children.

Conclusion

In its essence, Kutubee is a very versatile tool that packages key features, both for educators and children, in order to deliver quality reading material and comprehension of stories.

It allows for an entire class or grade level to simultaneously start on a curated list of books set by the teacher, but it also gives individual students space to explore and progress on their reading at a pace that is comfortable for them to bear.

Teachers also have the ability to view class-wide and grade-wide statistics on how many books are being read and how many hours are being spent reading. They can also assign reading assignments and monitor individual students by requesting the student to record a reading session.

This combined feature set allows for gentle guidance and independence of learners, boosting their confidence in reading.

Check out Kutubee now!

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The 3Rs of education start with reading, writing, and then move on to arithmetic. Reading is the first ‘R’ taught to the child in school and for that matter, it is the most basic fundamental skill that the child needs to learn in order to succeed in life. A good habit like ‘reading’ when cultivated at an early age can spark an interest in the child and stays with the child even when he is grown into a teenager and an adult. The idea is to make the child comfortable with reading a book, whether it is a story or a workbook from school.

Make books your child’s best friend! Though reading is a simple activity, there are numerous benefits attributed to it. Besides being a fun thing to do, reading sharpens the mind, improves concentration, and even enhances interpersonal skills. Through reading, an elementary school goer is exposed to different kinds of information, stories, and ideas that influence their thoughts and feelings. A young reader develops favorable qualities like empathy, confidence, and a strong belief system based on high morals & values. The benefits of reading are limitless and through this blog, we aim to highlight a few of them:

Increased Attention Span

In today’s world of increasing social media usage and digital entertainment, the attention span of the child is getting shorter. It is really a mammoth task for parents to get their 6-year-old children to sit in one place and focus on a task. Slowly introducing your energetic bundle of joy to the world of reading allows him to ‘stay put’ for a longer duration. Hence, a simple practice of dedicating 20-minutes of ‘reading time’ daily goes a long way.

Improved Imagination

Reading to your children, and later encouraging them to read on their own, helps to stimulate the imagination in a powerful way. It is the innate nature of the child to be curious, however, a good book further enhances ‘curiosity’ and encourages the child to ask relevant questions to adults. While asking questions, the child engages in verbal interaction, which helps him use vocabulary to communicate what he is thinking and feeling while trying to discover a new concept.

Fostering Creativity

Vivid characters and attractive imagery in the book broadens the scope for creative thinking amongst children. They jump right onboard the fantasy wagon which transports their imagination into an exciting sojourn where even the sky is not a limit. Children who are creatively inclined do not hesitate to try out new ideas, and are more likely to be better at problem-solving

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